


Futile Winged Things

by Pink_Siamese



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BDSM, Dom/sub, F/M, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:39:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 49,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Siamese/pseuds/Pink_Siamese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I would hide in the shadow of you only to come out when in the fullness of my secret self, dressed in all those things I never knew."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Futile Winged Things

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains a stream-of-consciousness style and free verse poetry in addition to traditional prose. The imagery in places is extremely graphic and is not for the faint of heart. Contains themes of bondage/discipline/sadomasochism. If none of this turns your crank, bail out now. There's still time.

I.

The fear the sweat the fear the sweat except she doesn't have any of those things only a bowl of angry skin and eyes that want to be empty but can't quite pour themselves out I want to loosen my tie wipe a hand across my forehead and somewhere beneath the angry chafed red skin the rope doesn't love her soft but it loves her hard and forces the blood, its surge to the surface where it can be seen—her breath is soft and cloaked with adrenaline, her skin rubbed raw, there is a dark creature buried in the blackest chambers of her brain and with a jolt of well-placed electricity it comes to life and

Every thud of flesh on flesh makes me twitch a little throb a little get a little harder every slap coming home and how the truncheon yearns for the skin and the blood yearns right back screams out in bruises and breached integrity and smears itself along the smooth black surface, so pretty, so red, so shrill, so hot, her arms like butterfly wings fastened tight to a white wall—such a lovely contrast, purple welts crisscrossing in a broken alphabet of mysterious skin

Jacket off tie off shirt buttons loosened one at a time until the hot sweating air settles into the accelerating cadence of my lungs and I can smell her blood and her sultry breaths piled up all over mine in the fetid atmosphere of this small space and her posture says _I know you're moving_ and _I know you're drawing closer_ and _I know what you're capable of_ and _I am still waiting_ and this last snaps inside me. It feels nice to slam the back of my hand across her cheek but not nice enough and it feels a little better to do it again but still it's not enough here is her bare neck trembling her little collarbones rising up and down and her closed eyes and fluttering eyelids she is in the darkness waiting in a place that cannot be beaten out shocked out sliced out and all of this hovers like a shadow on her face her strange immobile quiescent face. It simmers in the corners of her mouth

Her neck doesn't change in the palm of my hand. It remains the same when I lick the back of it. The salt that once lived inside her body groans its secret message on my tongue and I smell her hair and at last there is something rising, a small vibration taking hold in her flesh. It resonates all the way up to her scalp, quivering, and it draws the bridge of my nose closer and presses through the hair into the bone. Her breath changes. My breath changes with it. The expansion of her throat pushes into my palm and her bones murmur up through the skin and utter broken words and I take hold of her neck and squeeze and her pulse slams against my hand and says _I am not afraid_. I take hold of her breast and squeeze it hard enough to hurt and the nipple says _I am not afraid_. I put a hand between her thighs. Her hot thick slippery moisture is silent. The softness in her yielding cunt is silent. My fingers fall into her

I have no words

 

II.

 

He used to be something else but this room strips away all significance and now he is only careful feet and vigorous breath and an odor like dark spicy leaves crushed in layers of expensive cloth with big hard disciplinarian hands and composure that threatens to sweat beyond its limits his unfettered palm closes around my neck and ignites a tiny ember in the hollow of my throat and I struggle with the sudden discord of my breath because no one has touched me in days weeks months no one has touched me since birth no one has touched me ever I want to shed my skin because naked flesh would hurt less and I am a terrible virgin when 'ever' is reckoned in the lifespans of flies and moths and other winged futile things

The touch of his tongue fills my spine with anguish and fireflies while my bruised skin mutters things that should never be said

And oh there is pain but not enough  
Condensation at the roots of my   
Hair and the resonance of bone finding its  
Way to drooling hungry fingers in  
My sticky sweet treacherous cunt  
Stained blood languid and dark and  
Feverish it hurts oh but not  
Enough it's never enough  
Fractured yearning and the cry of fingers  
Like matches  
Oh fingers oh fingers oh

Strange sweet panting things drift up out of me and toss about thrash about float like broken souls scooped up in a net and he wants to kiss me and my neck breaks down while my legs lose what little strength they have left he is doom anger power persuasion detonation gunpowder agony and eviscerated threats stinging honey and he is pouring into my mouth gagging me and his tongue is in it and the ropes won't hold my mind my rushing blood my determination and my craven lust I want to drown I want to kill I want to watch myself break down a little at a time and I can't stop can't breathe can't move can't live

Through this

Each vertebra unbolted and the back of my head is the only thing that doesn't feel some sort of pain and my scalp is full of cold crawling pleasure the roots trying to get stiff the skin slinking toward the rapid engine of his breath and basking at its hot sweaty feet and the coal in my throat flares with the energy of my cunt and the heat climbs my face and clashes with the cold in my hair the cold in my nipples the cold in my feet and the icy clawing need in my belly feeds my drooling weeping wailing demanding hole, screams to be filled, the secret hot hairy wrinkled flesh swearing out its defamation in a thunderclap of scent and he will…not…stop.

I make a sound. It startles me.

_Are you going to_ (loosening belt) _are you going _(rustling cloth) _are you_ (unzip) _are…oh yes—ah, yes, there it is, there you are, here I am, here it is_

Scraping axis (groan) sweet in and out and in and out  
And (moan) in and  
I'm lowing like  
A beast and  
There is so much  
Shame but it's not enough  
And I sound like a sob but  
Feel like death  
And immolation in  
The scratched match of  
A long breathless scream

He makes a sound. It nestles in my ear and makes me come. And come. And come.

_Kill me  
Kill me  
Kill_

 

III.

 

My name is  
Mira and I play  
The piano but

She writes with her fingers on the walls, empty letters fashioned out of air and committed to cold stone so she cannot forget. The concrete is cold and rough under her skin but it keeps her eyes open

My mother  
Died with a name  
And a heart

She slept for a long time. Long black hours. The long black hours came after the sobbing and the stiffening came out of the sleep. They gave her hot food. The foreign temperature waged war with her cold feet and chilly fingers but her healing flesh forced it down

Mira I am  
Made of bruises  
And stone

No interrogation today. None yesterday or the day before. Time lives in this tiny gray room and her moving finger writes. She smears herself across the concrete. She can't smell the oils the shed skin cells but she knows they're there and so she weeps a little

My  
Incredible  
Rage  
Abates

And stone breaks.  
It breaks.  
But it's warm  
In there

I am alive and on fire and full of water and I am  
Still here

She leans her face against the wall and curls her legs up to her chest.

I am still waiting.  
I am still waiting.

She strokes the wall as though it could be skin  
If it wanted to

 

IV.

 

SUBJECT is Caucasian Female (#1201-33-1975) cell #2012 location RED WING. ARREST DATE 280815AR (DETAIL charges of OBSCENITY, CONSPIRACY, and SEDITION).

SUBJECT is approximately twenty five years of age. Observational assessment yields no scars, mental deficiencies, or physical deformities. SUBJECT has shown unusual resistance to conventional interrogation and continues to display uncommon fortitude in the face of physical persuasion (DETAIL application of TRUNCHEON, application of CANE, WHIP, and HAND as well as the application of ELECTRIC SHOCK). Following combination of conventional and experimental interrogatory methods (DETAIL application of VERBAL INTIMIDATION, the HAND, and SEXUAL METHODS) interrogation logged date 220915AR, SUBJECT became immobilized with distress and required hands-on transport back to her cell. Unusual response to SEXUAL METHODS documented in reference video logged 220915AR16:24-17:12. See ATTACHMENT.

ATTACHMENT to REPORT #220915AR is as follows (signed witness Com. TERENCE F. SMITH; undersigned Dr. PETER R. CREEDY):

SUBJECT displays unusual response to SEXUAL METHODS (DETAIL presence of VOCALIZATIONS, BREATHING PATTERNS, and INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS consistent with SEXUAL AROUSAL and ORGASM). Interrogator (DETAIL High Chancellor ADAM D. SUTLER) corroborates and reports the presence of LUBRICATION and GENITAL CONTRACTION consistent with SEXUAL AROUSAL and ORGASM. Cause of response is unknown.

He reads it again. And again.  
He strokes the paper  
As though it could be skin  
If it wanted to

 

V.

 

ID# 1201-33-1975  
Name: MIRA BELLE LARSON  
Sex: FEMALE  
Date/place of birth: 18051995BR LANCASHIRE, UK  
Assigned: #2012 RED WING, STONEWALL DETENTION FACILITY

Arrest date/charges filed: 280815AR OBSCENITY (DETAIL possession and dissemination of OBSCENE KNOWLEDGE), CONSPIRACY (DETAIL intention to facilitate the dissemination of aforementioned OBSCENE KNOWLEDGE), and SEDITION (DETAIL oral distribution of language encouraging the DISREGARD of LAWS set forth by the DEPARTMENT OF OBJECTIONABLE MATERIALS)

***FOR FURTHER DETAILS SEE ATTACHMENT***

 

Bio: MIRA BELLE LARSON daughter of Com. HENRY H. LARSON (d. 100210AR) and SARAH MILLFORD LARSON (d. 041513AR). Accepted to THE PEOPLE'S CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC at age 6. Studied with renowned concert pianist ROWAN R. GREENWOOD until debut at age 12. Performed BACH, MOZART, and RACHMANINOFF at the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th GALA ANNIVERSARIES of the RECLAMATION and performed TCHAIKOVSKY, BACH, and RACHMANINOFF on the 60th, 61st, and 62nd celebratory occasions of High Chancellor ADAM D. SUTLER'S BIRTHDAY. Member in good standing of NORSEFIRE PARTY 180502AR-280815AR and employed at THE PEOPLE'S CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC as piano instructor 22605AR-280815AR. Father HENRY H. LARSON (retired commander STONEWALL DETENTION FACILITY 092509AR) died in hospital of complications arising from myocardial infarction. Mother SARAH MILLFORD LARSON (retired nurse STONEWALL DETENTION FACILITY 010513AR) died in hospital of complications arising from breast cancer stage IV. MIRA BELLE LARSON sole beneficiary of LARSON ESTATE (estimated worth 10M£).

 

***ATTACHMENT***

DETAIL crimes of OBSCENITY (#1201-33-1975):

 

The POSSESSION and DISSEMINATION of OBSCENE KNOWLEDGE, in this case the covert PERFORMANCE and INSTRUCTION of DANSE ORIENTALE, also known as "BELLY DANCE", "EGYPTIAN DANCE," and "RAQS SHARQI." For further definition of these terms consult //interlink.dept_objectionable_materials/dances-banned/danseorientale.

 

A seething stew of phrases: _isolation of the hips and undulation of the stomach…the bared torsos of women…the public agitation of breast tissue…and all manner of movements suggesting that which should remain behind closed doors_. The rhythmic breakdowns are listed and I think of a soft voice explaining how she hears vertically and that it's a very unusual thing to hears notes like conversations between voices and not like stacks of shapes or the flow of colors; there are photos of costumes and percussive instruments and I look at those things but I don't see them instead I see a young woman standing straight and tall as the flute of champagne in her hand and those long graceful fingers wrapped around the stem. I wonder if they've been broken and if not I wonder if they should be and I think it is something that should happen behind closed doors

…_deemed obscene Aziza by Hossam Ramzy on date 0301300R I Cash Radii by Pentaphobe examples of_

How I knew her father and  
_I hear notes like voices_.  
What do 4/4 and 7/8 have to say to each other?  
I would very much like to know.

 

VI.

 

I am not sure if this is a dream, for a pair of guards lead me into yet another room. The significance of this is not that it is just another room in a series of them, or that in many respects it is exactly the same as the others. My life has become delineated by this travel from room to room—individual hours boxed up in white paint or bare concrete for safekeeping and strung together on corridors framed in harsh white light. No. Someone has left a piano in this room. I say left behind because the piano is sad. I am sad. A piano has no place in such an ignoble room.

I am aware of things: the fly buzzing off the overhead bulb, the musty smell that says _this is all happening underground_, the stains that aren't quite bleached out of the floor. This is not the piano living in my father's parlor but it could be. With the application of time and deprivation and the steady white glare of the overhead lights it could be anything. The piano could be an instrument of death and I would love each resounding note even as it tore me apart. Perhaps this is the intent. I know no fear of the keys and to touch them would invite something awful.

No matter. It does not matter.

The bench is firm beneath me and the air tastes like mold and metal and this should be a dream. It would be sweet and it is sweet. The keys have the resonance of flesh. They are smooth and cool and they sing when I touch them and the acoustics in this room are as they should be in a small underground room that is walled in concrete and stained with sorrow and defeat. My wrists hurt as they try to fall into proper alignment and this too is sweet. I praise the elaboration of my dreaming mind, its cleverness, the detail of my aching wrists and stiff fingers, that the piano is in perfect tune, how the notes are pleasant and soothing even though I've lost the reflexes I had at fifteen, the ingenuity I had at twelve, and the purity I had at six. My mind is a din that it wasn't in childhood and if I let the muscle memories dance the voices will calm. If I'm a good girl the notes will talk to each other and if I'm a sweet girl I'll hear them

_…in such an ignoble room_  
And remember the taste of champagne  
_calm is numbers and the whisper of_  
A bitter tongue

I know this has to be a dream because I'm crying and the tears don't have room they can't squeeze out between the notes

_sweet girl sweet girl such a sweet girl in your blue dress and your_

Shame

I am well-fed and I am stained in sorrow and defeat and I don't care I am not afraid of the keys I am still good I am still sweet I can still listen and I remember the order of the pieces I want to play them all but I string pieces together instead and imagine the orchestra

I forget the electric eyes  
I forget the moment and  
Forget him  
Until the remembering hurts  
Like it should

 

VII.

 

_Subject is clean and alert_. He jots it down. _Subject has attempted to tie her hair back away from her face_.

"Do you know who you are?"

"Yes."

"Your name, please."

"Mira Belle Larson."

"Very good. Do you know where you are?"

"Yes. This is the Stonewall Detention Facility. Located somewhere near the border with Ireland, I do believe, though I was never privy to that sort of information."

There is a pause. Dr. Smith looks at her. She sits in the chair without fidgeting, her hands loose and folded on the tabletop. Her wrists are secured in locked leather and the leather bands are chained to a ring in the center of the table. Her elbows are straight and her shoulders relaxed. _Subject appears calm and unaffected by surroundings_.

"I am here to try and reason with you," he says. "It is thought that reason may work where other methods have not."

"I don't know."

"What don't you know?"

"I don't know anything."

"Surely you know why you are here."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Are you aware of the charges filed against you?"

"Yes. Fourteen charges of obscenity have been filed as defined by the Department of Objectionable Materials for the possession of knowledge concerning Danse Orientale, Raqs Sharqi, or belly dance. An accompanying fourteen counts of conspiracy have been filed for the dissemination of the aforementioned obscene knowledge and ten counts of sedition have been filed as defined by the Department of Objectionable Materials: 'The oral distribution of advice against the laws set forth by the Party and the encouragement and facilitation of rebellion against those laws.' Though the reasoning behind ten counts is beyond me. Apparently someone is unable to count."

"You are a well-spoken and intelligent woman."

"Yes, doctor. And now you're going to ask me if I'm guilty of any of these charges and I'm going to say no. You're going to ask me where I learned such things, or more specifically to name the person or persons who taught them to me, and I'm going to reiterate the fact that I don't know what you're talking about."

"Miss Larson, several witnesses have testified against you. They've named you personally."

"People will say anything to save themselves. People will do anything to avoid being incarcerated."

"Some of them are incarcerated."

Mira says nothing.

"Many of them have been released. They've offered their full cooperation."

Mira looks at him and remains silent.

He looks at the notebook. He writes something down. "How are your meals, Miss Larson? Have you enjoyed the hot food?"

"I have enjoyed it very much."

He looks at her. "I see it's made you chatty."

Mira unlaces her fingers. "One finds it easier to think when one has been properly fed."

"Your last conversation of this kind was a failure." He sits back and rests an ankle across his knee. "Your records report listlessness, a lack of eye contact, and failure to verbally engage. I do believe you were kept in this room for ten hours."

"Sit in a room yourself for ten hours and see what it does to your inclination toward conversation." Mira curls one hand inside the other. "At that time I had been beaten, starved, and deprived of sleep. Currently I am fed, rested, and without recent injury. One could argue that I am in fact primed for conversation. One could also ask why. One may be tempted to. But I am not."

"Why not?"

"It is irrelevant."

He sits back in his chair. "What do you know about belly dance?"

"Nothing."

He plays with his pen. "Could you describe the execution of its movements?"

"No."

He taps it once on the table. "Are you aware of its cultural and musical roots?"

"No."

He tosses the pen onto the notebook. "You did not study such things at the

Conservatory?"

"No, doctor. I did not."

"May I call you Mira?"

"No, doctor. You may not."

He opens his mouth and the overhead speaker cuts in: "Dr. Smith." He presses a button beneath his side of the table. "Yes, Mary?"

"Your presence is requested."

"Thank you, Mary." He collects his things and stands up. "My apologies for the interruption, Miss Larson."

Mira looks at him and says nothing.

"We will continue this straightaway," he says.

Mira watches him leave the room. Her eyes fix onto the wall and fall out of focus. Her back is stiff but she ignores it. She measures the moments by her breath. Long and slow, quiet and adrift, her mind starts to wander. The muscles in her face relax. Her lips part. Little by little her face fills with emptiness.

The door opens and the sound is not enough to dislodge her. It closes. Things are blurry and she doesn't know how much time has passed. She doesn't care. She has faith in the good doctor. The good doctor will snap her out of it. The light is in her eyes and she cannot see. The chair pulls out and scrapes on the concrete floor. A settling of weight and the cadence of breath is all wrong and she has time to think _he doesn't breathe that way he breathes through his mouth_ and _he smells like mint and this man smells like something else_ and _this table is too fucking small_. She looks across the table and sees straight elbows and well-made sleeves and raw-knuckled fingers folded tight against one another. She thinks if she breathes faster the moments will speed up. They don't. They drag out kicking and screaming and he waits a long time before speaking.

"Hello, Mira."

Her neck stiffens. "Chancellor."

"I've had a chance to think about this," he says. "And it's so very disappointing, don't you think?"

She looks away. "How's that, sir?"

"You had such an advantageous start." He paused. "You are the product of an exemplary family. How did this happen?"

"I was arrested. I was detained. People said things about me, reported them, and without substantiation conclusions were drawn." She swallows. "My family had nothing to do with it. They're dead." She paused. "As you well know."

"It is your position that has all been a misunderstanding."

"Yes."

"Now, now. Where are your manners? Look at me while I'm speaking to you."

Mira blinks. "Yes." She blushes. The light makes her squint. "That is my position."

"Let's turn this off, shall we? There." He flicks off the light. "Now that's better, isn't it?"

"Yes." She nods. "Yes it is."

"You've improved."

"H-How…how do you mean, sir?"

"You've had something to eat and you aren't so very bruised."

"Oh. Yes. Through no action on my part."

"Of course not."

There is a long moment of silence. It bleeds into another long moment. And another. And another.

"Tell me about the notes," he says.

"What notes?"

"How they speak to one another." He touches the tip of her thumb. "The conversation."

"I-I don't…"

"Yes, you do." He traces the side of her index finger. He smiles. "Tell me everything."

Her hand starts to shake. "I don't understand what you want."

He picks up her wrist and turns it over. He takes her hand. His skin is warm and smooth, his fingers firm against her palm. "It is something you once said to me. A long time ago. Don't you remember?"

"Yes."

"Please elaborate."

"I-I…can't."

"Shhh. Of course you can."

"I…" She swallows. "Um, I was told once that I hear things differently. From a lot of other musicians. That for them it's like…like shapes fitting together, or like colors…colors blending."

He moves his thumb across her knuckles. He does it with a light touch, stirring the skin. "And for you?"

"It's more like words or feelings without words, as though the notes are like people who can talk without talking, like there is no barrier of communication. That is, barrier between communications," she says.

"You're doing very well, Mira." He touches the side of her chin. She starts to sweat. "Is the conversation like this? Like you and me now?"

"No. It's different. It's like people overlaying…overlaying words but with intent, or like…or like…"

"Yes?"

The hollow of her throat blooms in red. "Like kissing."

"How so?"

"The interplay of skin moves faster than words…it's sensation to sensation without the clumsiness of translation. With words you have to think before you can speak but in a kiss you don't think at all. Skin doesn't think. It just…feels."

"I see. Does beledi think like a 7/8 rhythm?"

"No, it thinks like a…a…"

He touches her chin and leans across the table and kisses her mouth. She lets out a startled breath and her lips bloom out of their reverie. He draws her out and into the humid tide of his breath and their mouths fall on top of one another. At the first tentative brush of her tongue he takes hold of her index finger and wrenches it to one side. He bares his teeth until the knuckle dislocates. Her breath stops. His grip tightens on the back of her neck. "Quickly, now." He speaks into her cheek. "Who taught you?"

Her body bucks against the edge of the table and she lets out a long rising scream that wheezes. Fat trembling tears squeeze out of the corners of her eyes. Her mouth contorts and she starts to sob. He puts his hand on the side of her face. She wrenches away from it. "Shhhh. Come now." He takes hold of the back of her head. "Shhhh. That's enough." He kisses the corner of her mouth. She lets out a long hitching moan. "Enough of that, now." He sets his grip on her thumb and she stiffens up. Her breath climbs in a sharp scale. He leans forward and kisses the tender space just below her ear. "Now I'll ask you again." His voice is low. "Where did you learn?"

"I learned at home," she whispered.

"Who taught you?"

"The maid."

"Her name?"

"Carolyn Bloomfield."

He touches the hollow of her throat. "Say it again."

"C-Carolyn Bloomfield."

"And where is she now?"

"I don't know."

He tightens his fist around her thumb.

"I don't know!" Her voice cracks. "I don't know!"

"Shhhh. All right. All right." He releases her thumb and takes gentle hold of her injured finger. She whimpers. "It'll be fine. Hold still. Hold still, now." He steadies the back of her hand. She bites her lip and her teeth tremble. He shoves the knuckle back into place. She cries out. "There, there." He wipes her streaming nose with the back of his hand. "They'll splint this and it will heal and all will be well." He brushes her tears away with his thumbs and kisses her forehead. "Thank you, Mira. You've done an excellent job."

In each word her voice dwindles: "T-Thank you."

(DETAIL application of JOINT DISLOCATION and SEXUAL METHODS deemed SUCCESSFUL signed Com. TERENCE F. SMITH undersigned Doctor IAN F. SMITH)

He walks out of the room.

(…logged date 280915AR. Cause of response remains unknown.)

VIII.

This is evening  
And he says  
"Do not record this."

*

I didn't know about the pain until  
Now I didn't  
Weave these threads or hold  
The blood  
It is stubborn  
And it won't back down  
Until this moment  
Made of skin says hi how are you  
And angry muscles say  
Pleased to meet you  
Through clenched teeth  
While the bones rub against each other  
And moan oh yes and oh yes  
Through the splint  
I feel swollen  
Flesh and the crying pulse  
Buried inside its smothered little voice  
Saying please and oh yes oh

*

"Mira," I say  
And her raw whispering wrists  
Say _please_ and _it means nothing_  
And _my skin is inside out_  
Her bruises are sullen  
Her breath crucified  
Her eyes a little room  
To curl up in  
Her fingers say I want your hair  
And they shake.  
And I say, "My goodness."

She says nothing  
But spells it out on my skin  
Her fingers see me  
And their bones murmur  
_I'll feed you_ and _I know_  
And _learn these things_  
Her mouth is bright  
Her neck agonized  
Her teeth a fence  
Fashioned out of snow  
Her knees say I want the floor  
And they shake.  
I am silent.

"Adam," she says  
And my shoulders  
Say _please_ and _it means nothing_  
And _say it again_

But she takes off my belt

*

And I make a noose of it  
To hang his hand  
And draw it tight  
Because it's never enough  
To breathe

"Hurt me," I whisper. "I need it."

*

Her knees get their wish.  
Her bruises sing.  
Her eyes make space  
To stretch out  
And touch each side of her face  
To the concrete, cooling it  
And I say, "Such slutty blood."  
The belt spells it out  
On her skin while the strength of my arm  
Says _yes_ and _oh yes_  
And _Mira  
Mira  
Mira_  
Until she holds on by her teeth  
And lets go

*

There is no place for sex.  
The floor is raw and  
The walls have no skin  
Between his mouth and my flesh  
As the broken places  
Accept his tongue's devotion  
To their song.

I cannot speak

*

Her blood says _Adam  
Adam  
Adam_  
And  
I  
Cannot  
Speak

 

* * *

 

031015AR

Commander TERENCE F. SMITH:

Decision regarding prisoner #1201-33-1975 (MIRA BELLE LARSON) the SUBJECT is to be RELEASED (date 041015AR) following the DISMISSAL of ALL CHARGES, exception one (1) charge of OBSCENITY and SUBJECT shall be FINED in the amount of ONE MILLION POUNDS STERLING (1M£). Upon the RECEIPT of said FUNDS record of one (1) charge OBSCENITY shall be EXPUNGED. THIS DECISION IS FINAL.

 

Signed High Chancellor ADAM D. SUTLER


	2. Like This

I.

"And fucking _smile_, will you?"

"I will." Mira looks out the window. "But I won't mean a gram of it."

"I don't care if you mean it or not." Lewis Prothero looks in the mirror and rubs his teeth. "Just look fucking pretty. That shouldn't be too hard, even for you."

"Because I have enormous respect for your nephew and an estimable measure of breeding, Lewis, I am _not_ going to tell you to fuck yourself."

"Oh goodness. Thank God for your breeding, then, such as it may be."

"The happenstance of your genes and my tenacity are the only things standing between your metaphorical manhood and a swift verbal kick."

He laughs. "Here we are."

The limousine pulls up before a bedecked entrance. Police flank the long black carpet and people wrapped in overcoats against the chill are gathered behind the riot shields.

"You're like one of those white little creatures someone pulled out from under a rock." Mira freshens her lipstick. "All flabby and myopic. It's a miracle, really, that any tailor could cut a tux on a worm like you."

He puts his arm on the back of the seat. "That's not what you said last night."

A uniformed soldier opens the rear door. A muted roar of voices, idling engines, and flashbulbs fills the air.

"That wasn't me, Lewis." Mira leans over and whispers in his ear. "That was your mother."

He gives her a sticky razor-sharp smile. She pretends to simper. He fixes her with a stony look and climbs out of the car. He waves to the crowd and the flashbulbs go crazy. He turns and offers Mira his hand. She takes hold of it and slides her leg out of the car. He holds her wrist aloft as she shifts her balance onto a high-heeled shoe. She steps up, rises to her full height. He places a steadying hand on the small of her back.

"I'm going directly backstage." Mira smiles into the stuttering light. "I imagine he's terrified."

Forced through smiling teeth: "Fine."

II.

The nephew is nothing short of genius  
And the food is excellent  
While the ocean of liquor rises  
And Rachmaninoff fills the crowd with awe

Razors embedded in each second  
And blood drops pounded  
Into the floor by her heels

She says bugger off  
And the speeches are boring.  
He says go to hell  
And it gets hot somewhere.

Silken words tighten on her ears  
And the lips of this country  
Yield to her single damaged knuckle

III.

Oh the silence is like stone and the stillness, the darkness inside this moving vessel fashioned out of metal and pride. She's not aware of the clench in her muscles, the angles made up of her bones and how they wait. A backed-up shore of pain hidden, bitten down and held in her jaws, and at that moment when he puts his hand on her vulnerable knee she becomes aware of her waiting, and the flashpoint comes, strikes a scream out of her heart and the cacophony buried in her flesh is something she must squeeze out, a burn she feels on a forced inhale.

"You're fucking drunk," she snaps.

His breath stinks of champagne. "I'm not."

She grabs his hand and wrenches it, her fingers tight around the baby-soft skin and the knuckles like stones beneath her sweating palm and his cable-like tendons full of smooth hard labor and hungry determination. He tries to grab and she pushes it down, skidding sideways, the heel of his hand digging into the muscle that clutches her knee and buries its hot trembling feet in her groin. She squeezes his fingers, and she knows by the pitch of his breath that it hurts and by the sudden loosening in his wrist that he wants her to let go. She closes her eyes and her breath rubs raw in and out of her throat. She opens her hand and molds his flesh to her flesh. He tries to pull away but she holds him there. The heat builds between their skins, gains a heartbeat and starts to pulse. Her breath finds the pulse and rides it.

"If you think you can," she says.

"Why don't you make up your fucking mind."

She lets go of his hand. "A little soft?"

"You rotten little bitch."

"Fuck you."

He clasps the inside of her thigh, fingertips burying themselves in her skin. She allows him to haul her knee closer. She leans her head back and takes sharp breaths through her parted lips. He trails his fingers down to the inside of her knee. Her obedient skin makes a trail of pointed little goosebumps.

"Why?"

"Because I can."

He pushes her thighs apart. "You're such a cunt."

Her hip joints loosen. "So are you."

He gets on his knees. "Are you always this easy?"

She slides her hips to the edge of the seat. "No."

His tongue is forceful. At first her clit wants to shy away from such an assault but the more she thinks about it the more she opens to it, growing soft and hot on the inside and flushed at the skin. Her breath sharpens and cuts into her voice, drawing sound like drops of blood welling up and running down the inside of her throat. He takes up the drops, rubs them into her cunt. Her breath shivers into pieces. The muscles along her spine contract, reduced to raw impulse.

"You like that?"

"Oh for Christ's sake shut up!"

"Do that again. You get tight when you scream."

"Goddammit!"

"That's very nice."

"Get out of there." She puts her foot on his shoulder and pushes. "Get out."

He climbs up onto the seat and unzips his pants. She hikes her gown up around her hips, straddles him, covers him like a weight and smothers his thighs with her own, bracing one hand against the roof. He is barely inside her when she pushes up with her hand, crushing all indecision between their bones, knocking his breath aside.

"Oh that's nice, isn't it?"

Her breath fills his ear. "Shut up."

He holds on to her face. "Make me."

He feels the sudden springs buried in her flesh, how tight they are until they let go and unleash a flood of chaotic movement; the hot struggle of her arms and the ferocity in her small thighs all feed into her cunt, and it tightens on him as though trying to get a better hold, a solid grip.

"Fuck," he gasps.

Her belly strives and she puts a hand over his mouth. "Shhh."

His eyes half-close and he groans into her palm, the sound sinking down into her knuckles and humming inside them. Her breath quickens. He squirms his head around and bites down on the side of her hand. His teeth are soft and the skin yields, offers itself up to the maddening sensation. He licks, tongue hot and belligerent, and paints her skin with spit. She tugs her hand free and wipes her palm across his cheek. His mouth finds hers and it is the silken answer to a rough question, an urgent entreaty forced through her veins. Their breaths lock. The heat goes back and forth, builds up, and she starts to melt. She drips and runs into the velvet cavern of his mouth and he fashions her anew with his tongue, massages her back to fervent life.

"Oh."

He inhales her breath. "Yeah."

"Oh shit."

"Fuck yeah."

She sinks into a deep hard frantic rhythm. "Like this."

He grips her hips and pushes up to meet her. "Like this?"

"Yes…oh…yes!"

She feels the sudden throb buried inside her and a surge of heat, each spasm underscored with a soft startled grunt. Her face grows hot, her cheeks the color of fire, and as the big muscles clench in his thighs and the small ones go loose in his jaw she feels her skin succumb to sweat. It oozes out, forces itself, tingles in her hair and stains her lips. She gets wet all over listening to him. Each change in pitch quivers in the heart of every salty bead, resonates in the root of every hair. Something inside her falls apart into handfuls of water and she soaks into the seat.

He puts a hand on her heaving belly. His thumb slides through her slippery hairs and parts them for the hard flesh beneath, delicate and soft and patient. "Like this?"

She nods.

It wells up on cherry tides, stoked by gradual motion, sweet and dark and lashed with rising wind. A trembling moment of enraged flesh passes through the dusky spaces between them, pushed by blood and arrogance and the secrets murmured between the shadow and the soul. Her skin and bones touch each other and begin to sing. The hair cling to her temples and he smells the delirium cooking into her skin, dissolving into her surge. He kisses her wild pulse. The salt burns his lips.

Her jaw begins to shiver. With the chattering teeth comes the cold, insidious in retreating blood, and it settles down over her skin. She moves off him and fits in the corner of the seat. She pulls the long skirt of her gown over her legs and bends her knees. She wears her overcoat like a blanket, looking out the window. The night is made up of lights and darkness and hidden buildings and she imagines the smell of the cobblestones after a hard cold rain, tasting her feverish cunt on the back of her tongue. Four lampposts pass her window, one after another, with military precision.

"Rowan wants a donation," she says.

"I know."

"Are you going to give it to him?"

"I think so. That's why you agreed to this whole evening."

"Yes."

Glances pass each other in a moment that gives up its scent like the flesh of bruised fruit.

"I do hope you're able to get the semen stains out of your pretty blue frock."

"Go to hell."

"So charming. Like miasma with a tight quim."

"I should slap you for that but I really can't be bothered."

The car rolls to a stop.

"Good night, Mira."

"Good night, Lewis."

The chauffeur opens the door. The night smells like cobblestones. She steps onto them and the cold climbs into the heels of her shoes and gives her a reason to shiver.

IV.

_When someone quotes the old poetic image  
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,  
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings  
of your robe._

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,  
don't try to explain the miracle.  
Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

When lovers moan,  
they're telling our story.

Like this.

The words are too much  
And he will not remember them

V.

Mira goes into her empty house and fills it with light and the whisper of her bare feet on the wooden floors. Her outfit falls by the wayside, coming away from her body pieces: her coat in the foyer, her shoes in the living room, her earrings left on a sideboard in the downstairs hall, her dress flung across the newel post. The shoes lay like bodies on a battlefield. The earrings glitter and there are no eyes to see them. She turns on the lights because she cannot abide the shadows and she needs to see the ghost of her face in each reflective surface.

The bath turns her skin pink. She pulls the pins out of her hair and lets them bounce on the tiled floor. Some of them skitter under the tub. One of them falls down into the heating vent. The steamy water pries the chill out of her bones. Slivers of it loosen and then melt into her blood, and her blood rushes into her skin where it blooms scarlet. Her twinges unwind. Her feet hurt from their time in the high-heeled shoes and her hips ache from balancing over them. Her spine sulks.

_I'm not cold anymore._

She doesn't want to leave the tub. It is full of water and she is full of water. It goes where it can and

_So do I._

She doesn't feel the first tears. They hide inside the heat and the exhaustion packed into her eyes and it's the constriction in her chest that makes her feel them. It feels good. Her body sighs its pleasure at the release of just a little more moony water.

_You are not allowed to cry. This is not allowed._

She turns on the faucet so she doesn't have to hear herself.

VI.

_I can say that I've lived here  
In honor and danger  
But I'm just an animal  
And cannot explain  
A life_

But the house is too empty

VII.

The place is like a memory drawn in smoke and off-colored lights. Tapestries hide the stone walls and soften them and the burning candles smell like old churches. Murmuring pays respect to the music playing over hidden speakers. There aren't many people here tonight; a handful gather at the little round tables and a few sit at the makeshift bar. There isn't a lot of dancing tonight. The anniversary of the Reclamation has put fear into the very concept of a place like this one.

But there are always a few brave souls.

In back of the tiny stage there are boxes filled with cast-off clothes. They are filled with secret lives sewn in forbidden silk and dead coins.

_I am a brave soul_, she thinks. _I am not afraid of memory._

She clothes herself in black and red because they were colors long before someone made them into a flag. She takes the stage. Her hips cry out and the coins shiver together. Her spine is raw and exposed while her arms become the snakes living inside her head, comely sinister just seeking a little warmth and she thinks of the male eye and how it will unwind slow and dark for three things snake spider naked woman

Black and red color of the bruises she no longer has but she wears the scars

VIII.

He sits near the bar.

"There's no speaking for this part of London," she says. "It's like a dream."

"So all of us are sleeping, then."

"No." Mira sits down. "But I think we want to be."

"Would you like another taste?"

"You may not fuck me, Lewis," she says. "But you may kiss me."

IX.

First there is breath, and then…no.  
First there is intent…no.  
First there is.  
First…yes.  
Yes.  
And then

I say it is an empty space, I tell myself this. It is an empty space and empty space longs to be filled, but what of the infinite empty space in the universe, all those stretched-out molecules waiting for nothing at all, those spaces murmuring down the pipeline from God and whispering into my ear, and I wonder about the existence of God and whether there is really space for Him between all of those stretched-out molecules, all of those unexplained tiny pockets inside of me, and maybe the voice of God lives inside the rain, waits for one stone to bounce off another before speaking. Those spaces in space don't need a voice. I don't need a voice. All I need is a mouth.

I want a vacuum.  
And then

Slow, slow, slow. There is a tiny vacuum and I rush into it because I don't have the fortitude of the universe. I am not made to make space. If you hollow me I will fill myself and if you hollow yourself I will leave my skin to spill into yours, and your diligent tongue has no business, no business at all carving out these little empty places within the reckoning of my life and you have no business leaving your skin to spill into mine and yet there you are, here I am, here it is, there is no space, I have no time, I am inside of you and then I am inside of me again.

I want a bridge.  
And then

Breath.

And

X.

If Mira was awake she would be thinking about her father.

Mira is asleep.

Mira remembers her father when she is awake. During the day she remembers him as he was during the day and at night she remembers all the times she woke early in the very dark morning and found the single sconce in the hallway burning, that dim line of light drawn under her door. Silence lived in the light on the good mornings and whispers floated on that current of weak light on the bad ones and sometimes when there was heavy rain her father's voice screamed. She heard her mother's voice drawn in those weak heavy whispers, the kind that attach themselves to a scream and drag it down to a place where it can be still. The screaming crept inside the dark heavy rain. The whispers took the screams the way a mother cat will take her kittens by the scruff of the neck and the screams curled up into themselves and went limp.

Lewis is not dreaming yet, but he will be.

The whispers turned into notes and her mother always had a nicer voice than Mira ever would but Mira always felt the notes inside her mother's voice, before Mira had the words she had the notes, and she knew when they were wrong but she forgave them inside her warm simple child's heart because they were sacred in their brokenness; on the very dark rainy nights when her father could not sleep, when he cowered in the big chair while the past came to him out of the deluge, her mother took tight hold of his wrists as if to keep him there and she made herself small upon her knees, her breastbone tight against his calves so her voice would resonate in his bones. She put her throat to his thigh and sang to him from the inside. Her voice went beneath the rain, crept up between the drops, and pulled out all of its claws.

Lewis is dreaming.

When Mira got older her mother told her about the night terrors and the strange dry sobbing like the rain was doing all the crying for him and how when it wasn't raining sometimes he would talk about the things that happened. _Your father has been to the wars_, her mother would say back when Mira still counted her age in single digits. _When you're big you'll understand_. Mira's mother looked old when she told her daughter these stories. The memories of those stories crept into her face and hijacked her vitality for the moments it took to articulate them, to slice away all of the still-bleeding things that Mira didn't need to know, all the things her mother wished she herself didn't know. The ghosts of all those little tiny murders took up residence in the nests of wrinkles around her mother's eyes. Those pauses between the words said more than the words themselves ever could if they were parted from their accompanying bated stifled awful little silences.

Mira is big but she still doesn't understand. She doesn't need to. She is asleep.

There is too much darkness. The darkness is heavy and everything in it smells wrong. Lewis dreams that his eyes keep opening and every time they do he sees is more darkness. He looks for the room inside the darkness and he feels the things that want to come out but his nerves are full of razors and the air won't move. It tastes like spent gunpowder and smells like old sunshine. All of his muscles clench and he flinches into a roar of agonized breath. His heart pounds, filling the dark heavy silence. The sweat leaks out and takes hold of the sheet and sticks it to his skin.

Mira wakes up. She is confused. She puts a hand on his skin and she is no longer confused. _The first song I ever played_. She thinks she has spoken these words aloud but she hasn't. They are only in her mind but her hand is solid. Her hand is real. It stays on his skin and her fingers open up their eyes and they see all the things that his skin doesn't know how to say. _I played it when I was four years old_. His muscles are tight with ancient half-forgotten violence and she is afraid. She rummages through her fear and finds her voice. It is not as nice as her mother's, it is frayed with sleep, but the notes are perfect. The notes make themselves perfect and whisper to each other before they climb onto her voice and slide out into the air. They pirouette into the silences.

"Oh the smart money is on Harlow." The words are shaped of barest breath. "And the moon is in the street…the shadow boys are breaking all the laws. You're east of East St. Louis and the wind is making speeches. The rain sounds like a round of applause."

Her hand tells her that he is still lost.

"They all pretend they're orphans and their memory's like a train." The notes drift among his broken breaths. "You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away. And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget that history puts a saint in every dream. Well she said she'd stick around until the bandages came off, but those mama's boys just don't know when to quit."

His sweat is full of panic and she can smell his hair.

"And Matilda asks the sailors, are those dreams or are those prayers? So just close your eyes, son, and this won't hurt a bit." The words climb to a soft high place. "And it's time, time, time…and it's time, time, time that you love."

"Wh…?"

"Shhh."

"I…"

"It's too early to get up," she whispers.

"I said." He is muffled by the pillow. "I said no children."

"Are you awake?"

"Goddamned fucking doctors." He puts an arm up over his head. "Dead children smell like rotten bacon. Did you know that?"

Ice forms in her veins. "No, Lewis. I didn't know that."

"I said no." He is calm. "I told them no but those fuckers with the needles have all the control."

"Lewis." Mira swallows. "Are you awake?"

"I don't know." An unsteady rhythm creeps into his breath. "Am I?"

"Yes." She puts a hand on his hair. "Go back to sleep if you can."

"They didn't listen."

"I know," she says.

"I said no."

"Yes." Mira moves her fingers through his hair. "You said no."

"They ran out of lime." His voice breaks. "And every day I smelled them and it was like smelling trash."

"Shhh. Go back to sleep if you can."

"Is it too early to get up?"

"Shhh."

"What is that song?"

"It's the first song I ever played on the piano." She leans her forehead into his hair. "My mother sang it to my father and that's how I learned it." She pauses. "I was four years old."

"What is the name of it?"

"Time. Tom Waits recorded it in 1985. He was from California. Go back to sleep."

He puts his forehead on his forearm. "I don't know if I can."

"Can you try?"

He sighs. "Yes."

"Do you want me here?"

He shifts his weight. "This is your bed."

"I know."

"Don't be a fucking idiot, then."

"If you want to be alone I'll leave you alone. If you don't, then I won't. Don't speak to me that way."

His fingers brush her lips, tap her chin, and follow the line of her cheek. "It's too bloody dark in here," he grumbles. "It's like having my head shoved up somebody's arse."

Mira bursts out laughing.

"It's not funny," he says.

Mira laughs until she cries. The new tears mix with the old ones and they run warm across his the back of his hand. He wipes her face and wipes his hand on her pillowcase.

"Well, I'll concede that it's a little funny," he says.

Mira wipes her nose. "I suppose I just don't know." She starts laughing again. "I've not actually had my head up someone's arse."

"Oh come on," he says. "Don't you tell me that you haven't had your head up Rowan's arse because I simply refuse to believe that."

"Now you're just beating a dead metaphor."

"How do you figure that? It's dark and it smells bad and the only reason you've got your head up there is to get some shit done. Am I right?"

"I'm not going to argue."

"No, but you're going to lie there and laugh at me until you cry."

"I'll stop. I'm too tired to carry on."

"You can stay."

Mira pushes the covers back and climbs out of bed.

"Where are you going? I said you could stay. I'd offer it in another language or two but you're piss out of luck."

She turns on the bathroom light. He hears the click of the switch and the doorway appears out of the dark. She pulls the door until it's almost closed and a slice of warm light moves through the darkness and spreads out across the floor. He watches her walk through the room, cups of light and shadow holding the shape of a woman, her disheveled hair piled on her back like twists of grass. Her knee sinks into the mattress and she pours out into the sheets, stretches in a pale a river of cunt. Her breasts are like islands and the shapes of her nose and chin are like islands until she turns over and then her buttocks are like islands, smooth hillocks rising up out of the fecund tide of her flesh. He runs a finger down the bridge of her spine. Her thighs and the backs of her knees ripple.

"Go back to sleep," she sighs.

He clears away her hair until the nape is visible and each tendon is crowned with sparse dark floss. He dips his face and runs his tongue between them. She turns over like a breaking wave and whispers _I'm too tired_ but her lips are too soft, too warm. She smells like mud and dead leaves and salt and inside her tongue live the spirits of little silver fish that have labored upstream from the dark hot cavern of her cunt. They swim into his mouth. He catches them in his teeth and she whimpers a little when he bites down. He threads his fingers through her hair and her hair is like an anchor.

The words slide back and forth, greased with new sweat and old semen: _sleep, yes, sleep, yes, time, time, time._

Afterward, Lewis falls asleep. Mira does not. She lies on her belly and feels the old broken notes run out between her legs.

The sun comes up and Mira begins to dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The italicized poems in this story do not belong to me. The first is excerpted from Rumi's "Like This." The second is excerpted from a Neko Case song titled "At Last."


	3. Desert Dream (Interlude)

I have this dream about you sometimes.

In this dream we are in a place we have never been. I don't know if that's significant or not and I know nothing of real deserts, I've only read about them in books, but this desert is full of cracks and the air is so dry that it steals the moisture right out of your breath.

You and I are in the desert. The sky is sharpened by the heat. I should pause and dwell upon the heat because something of such magnitude demands a proper introduction. The air doesn't shimmer the way it will in the distance of a hot summer day. If the ground was a furnace and the air rose up, fractured and broken, between your knees; if it fluttered in your vision like a veil made out of water, it would be like this heat. It is so hot that your bones feel like they're made of fire and your flesh will bypass any sort of combustion and crumble straight into ash. It is so hot that there is nothing left to burn.

You have coils of rope in your hands. I want to be the rope. I want to be the riverbeds worn into the backs of your hands. The rope is old and full of wisdom. It has tied up thousands of souls and sipped from a cup of unintended blood. Inside this dream-logic I feel your fingers on me the way I would feel them if I was unwound and woven, if I fell across your wrists. _The noose is tight. Don't pull or you will surely die_. I feel those words in the dumb fibers that would be my flesh, the old dirty coils that are my flesh. _Don't pull_. But it is in my nature to pull. I want to pull. I want to live looped around your fingers, coiled tight on those bowed bones with their big weathered knuckles. You want to tie me up but you can't. I am the rope. I pick up your knuckles and kiss them.

_I want to hear you scream_, I say. _It will bring rain._

And you say _I don't want rain._

I don't want rain either.

You say _there aren't any clouds._

I look down. I don't know it's there until I think of it and then it manifests out of me, forms into a long wicked shape. The knife is lodged in the space below my ribs and it hums with each breath. I listen for the pain but there is no pain. I pull it out of myself and there is no blood. My sucking skin makes the blade clean. I hold it up and the bitter sun reflects along the keen edge. The light stings my eyes.

_There aren't any clouds._

Your hair is covered in dust. All of you is covered in dust. The dust blows across the cracked ground in long thin spirals. I try to make spit but the spit won't come. I move the tails of your dirty shirt apart and your belly is white and narrow. Your hipbones are like cliffs. I follow their crumbling courses with my thumbs and a fine layer of sweat gathers on your skin. The flies swarm out of nowhere and arrive in clouds. They land on your belly. Your breath gets shallow. The flies crawl into your navel. I take the knife in both hands. It casts a long narrow shadow across your skin. You lift up a hand and trace a finger along the dull side. The blade quivers and gleams. My breath gets shallow.

_Don't pull_, you whisper. _The noose is tight._

It takes all of my strength and I know you would have it no other way: I haul my hands up over my head and swing the blade down. It slices through dry air and resistant flesh and pins your belly to the hard ground. You scream. It is a full hard breath of unabashed agony that slams up against a broken expanse of low whimpering. There is a flood of blood. Your body arches as if pushing it out. The clench of your guts cradles each sound before forcing it out of your trembling mouth. The air fills with the scent of metal. You stain your fingers with blood and move them, slow and quivering, over my hands. My hands are still wrapped tight around the haft. The blood is bright and sticky. Your slick fingers slide through the valleys of my knuckles.

The acetylene sky howls.

Your blood makes mud. The mud starts to sizzle. It exhales steam and I move astride your waist, taking the handle into myself. You grasp my forearms and your fingers tighten on my skin. My sternum fills with the restless hum of flies. You bare your teeth and the cords pull tight at the corners of your mouth while my breath weaves through your breathless endless screaming and stitches it down with a frantic heartbeat. My insides get tight and pull.

God, Adam…it's so nice.

And then I wake up.


	4. 9 Memories

I.

Though poor doomed Carolyn made an arithmetic of my body, bent knee plus flexed foot equals lifted hip, she didn't teach me how to take the memories out of my soul and breathe them into my flesh. Rowan taught me that. My childish mind imagined this happening like a wind, warm and sparkling and blowing in from some uncharted corner of the body. I thought magic could not bear the weight of a mundane existence.

I was wrong. Magic simply _is_.

Words written in the language of the body are hard to hear, and harder still to translate, but when they fall into the right heart they break open like flowers.

II.

There is the kitten in the green string. _I found it, and my father was weak, and though its limbs had become necrotic, he wouldn't kill it. Therefore I had to do it. I could say that such an experience gifted me with a profound sense of morality, but I'm not sure that's the truth. It gifted me with a profound sense of mortality. It taught me that things have to die._

III.

"I've never seen anyone dance like that."

Mira turned around from where she was wiping the sweat off the back of her neck with a towel. The colored light outlined a young lady with a nervous feline face holding a thick glass of stout. Mira looked around for the guy she came with; at a glance she didn't seem the type who take the risk alone.

"You're very good."

"Thank you." Mira took a drink of water. "Did you lose your bloke?"

"Oh! Uh, no, not exactly." Though she had to be in her middle twenties, Mira looked at her and thought girl. "We arrived together, but not with the intention of leaving together. If you know what I mean."

"I know precisely what you mean." Mira dried her face. "So what's your name?"

"Evey. I'm Evey Hammond." She held out a long bony hand. Mira smiled and took hold of it. "Mira Larson," she said. "Not that it does to use your real name in these places, but oh well. It doesn't look much tonight but you wouldn't believe the people you'll see."

"Are you the famous pianist?"

"One and the same, I'm afraid."

"My parents went to see your debut."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah." Evey grinned. "My father, he was quite a fan of the classics. He said that listening to your Bach was like listening to angels. Not that I imagine he'd ever actually heard an angel, let alone a band of them, but you know what I mean."

"I do. Do you want another drink?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Evey.

Mira tossed the towel onto the stage. "How about some water?"

"All right."

Evey looked around as Mira led her to the bar. "This whole place is…"

"Your first time," said Mira.

"Yeah. I'd heard about them, you know, from people I work with but always on the whisper and usually outside."

Mira secured two glasses of ice water. "Where do you work?"

"The BTN."

Mira picked them up and walked toward an empty table. It curled up in the back of the room, in a dark corner. Evey followed, her body stilted with uncertainty. Mira put the water on the table and sat down. Evey followed suit. She folded her legs and put the glass of stout on the table, looking at it for a moment.

"What do you do at the BTN?"

"Oh nothing really. Just assisting." Evey looked at her. "Are you…are you a lesbian?"

Mira laughed. "No."

"Oh." She smiled. "Well then, all right. Not that I have an issue with that sort of thing, because I don't. I just wanted to know what sort of foot we were starting off on."

Mira sipped her water. "Are _you_ a lesbian?"

Evey laughed. "No."

"All right, then, since we've established that no one is picking up," said Mira, taking a sip of her water, "and that picking up is no one's intention, tell me about your job at the BTN."

"It's a job." Evey rolled her eyes. "It pays the bills."

"No ambitions, then, to climb the corporate ladder?"

Evey burst out laughing, and it was the kind of unrestrained laughter that pops straight through the barriers of politeness and demands an answering grin. "Oh goodness no. I shudder to think what ascension at the BTN would require. I don't have the family connections to make it easy and I imagine it would be hard. Quite hard, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean." Mira made a quick hand gesture below the edge of the table and Evey giggled. "Does that sort of thing go on there? I confess I know nothing about it. That sort of thing does not happen at the Conservatory."

"I don't know if it does or not," said Evey. "But it seems the sort of place where it would. I'm in the habit of keeping my ears closed and minding my own business."

"It's the best way, I think."

"Yes, it is." Evey picked up her stout. " So how long have you been dancing here?"

"Awhile," said Mira.

Evey sipped. "How long is awhile?"

"A couple of years."

"What got you started?"

"I had a maid in my house who taught me. It wasn't she who made anything remotely serious of it, though. I did that on my own."

"What do you mean?"

"I had the knowledge, but I didn't want to use it in this way until I met someone."

"You mean like a boyfriend?"

Mira chuckled. "Yeah."

IV.

Lilacs. _If you are going to wake in the middle of a spring night, far better it should be to this: a vase full of flowers, placed beside our bed. The sweet fragrance holds all the best parts of daytime._

V.

Evey looked around. "Well is he here, then?"

"Oh, no. No, no. He'd never set foot in a place like this one." Mira shook the ice in her water glass before taking a drink. She lifted an eyebrow. "It's a sin against God and State."

"Oh, dear." Evey plopped her chin into her hand. "One of those, is he?"

"Dyed in the wool, I'm afraid."

"Are you still with him?"

"Very much so."

Evey watched her. "Well, if you don't mind me saying it, and I don't want to be rude or anything. You don't seem the type to go for that. I know we just met, but you just don't seem…buckled down enough. Tell me how does he do it? How does he live that sort of life?"

Mira shrugged. "He believes in what he's doing. It's the same thing we all tell ourselves so we can get to sleep at night."

"Does he work in government?"

Mira stirred the ice with her finger. "Yep."

"Oh." Evey shifted in her seat. "I see. I suppose you can't talk about it."

"I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you." Mira gave a sly grin. "I just don't feel a murder in me tonight."

"Well I'm so glad!" Evey took a deeper drink of the stout.

"Me too. Then I'd have no one to talk to and that would just be awful."

"I know just what you mean. I don't know anyone here at all. The bloke I came in with has gone home. At least I think he's gone home. I don't know. He's not here anymore." Evey leaned forward. "He's, you know,…a poof. So he found himself a boy to go home with and now I'm here by myself."

"Did you plan it that way?"

"Oh, oh yes."

"Good."

"You said you started doing this here because of your boyfriend." Evey put the glass down. "May I ask why?"

"Yes," said Mira. "You may."

"All right."

Mira looked into her water glass. "I suppose when you've got a significant part of your life that's secret, you need another part of it to be more secret."

"I don't understand," said Evey.

"I don't either, not really, but it works for me. I knew about these places same as you, from folks I work with, from others who talk. I didn't have anyone that I could even pretend to talk to, and besides there wasn't anyone I'd trust with this sort of thing anyhow, and it came into my mind that I could come into a place like this one and just sort of disappear. After all, it's what a lot of folks come here for."

"I don't see it that way at all," said Evey. "It looks to me like the place where people come to be themselves. The way things are…they just don't matter in here. It's like it's own place, sovereign but to yourself."

Mira measured the words before she let them out. She looked at Evey. "Isn't it the same thing? To disappear out of society and into yourself?"

"I suppose hadn't thought of it that way."

"I've had a fine life, and I can't complain." Mira sat back. "I know that's not reality for most of the people in this country."

"No," said Evey. "It isn't."

"I needed something that was only mine. Secret-keeping of any kind takes up an enormous amount of work. There's a lot of sweat and tears put into it." Mira paused. "My father, he was commander of a detention facility throughout most of my life and there was always a certain bit of hush-up around that. Not that he spoke of it often at home, but he did speak of it, and there was always that reminder not to repeat any of it to anyone: not in play with my friends, not in confidence with them as I got older, and not on the pillow when I became old enough for that."

Evey nodded. "I see. Go on."

"Of course he's dead now, and I don't think it much matters if I repeat something I heard at the dinner table. It's very secretive. There's a lot I don't understand."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Evey. "About your father."

"He's been dead for some time."

"Were you close with him?"

"Close as any daughter, I guess." Mira shrugged. "I loved him very much, and he was very good to me as I was growing up."

"What about your mum?"

"She's dead as well. They both died in hospital but not at the same time. My father had a heart attack and my mum died of cancer."

"Goodness, I'm so sorry. That's awful. Are you all alone, then? Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No. I'm the only."

"I had a brother," said Evey, toying with her glass. "He died when I was small. My parents…my parents are dead, too."

"There's a lot of that these days, isn't there?"

"Yes." Evey turned the glass around and around. "My parents died in prison."

Mira moved aside a strand of her hair. "I'm sorry."

"I was young." Evey shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

"I don't suppose you can talk about it?"

Evey's mouth quirked. "I suppose not."

Silence and in that silence the slow beat of music.

"I guess I think if I dance, then maybe I'll understand myself," said Mira. "But that just sounds like a load of bollocks, doesn't it?"

"No, I don't think so at all." Evey put the glass down. "I wish I was as brave as you."

"I'm not brave," said Mira. "I'm just backed into a corner."

Evey appraised her. "So if this boyfriend of yours is hard Party line, then what are you?"

Mira picked up her water glass. "Party line born and confused?"

"No." Evey smiled a little. "I'm being serious."

"So am I." Mira sipped. "I don't know. I suppose it's just a part of being English, isn't it? It's like having dark hair and blue eyes and lots of money. I inherited all of it. It's not something I ever thought much about."

"Do you love him?"

"Yes I do."

VI.

Rattan. _I should like you to handle it, familiarize yourself with it, feel how it yields to the inevitability of motion. This is all the better to imagine the marring of your flesh._

VII.

"You know, I'm not sure a man who wouldn't come here and watch you dance, especially when you do it so well and with such heart, is worth you. But good for you. Good for you just the same."

"It's not something I want him to see," said Mira.

"Why not?"

Mira paused. "I don't know."

"Well, I could understand if you were absolutely horrid at it, but you're not. Does he know that you do it?"

"Yes."

"So then it's got nothing to do with that whole 'this is a sin and an abomination' load of crap. I suppose for some people that could be worth breaking up over, though it would be a stupid reason." Evey rolled her eyes. "People break up over dumber things, that's for sure."

"No, it's not that." Mira looked at the scars on the table.

"Then I don't understand. But I suppose I don't have to, do I?"

"No," said Mira. "I guess you don't. So what about you? You have anyone in your life?"

"I have lots of people in my life," said Evey. "But I'm not shagging a single one of them."

Mira laughed.

"More's the pity." Evey shrugged. "Though sometimes it seems like too much work, getting hold of a man and keeping hold of him, getting to the point where you aren't sick of him, or pretending that you aren't sick of him. Not that this is only about men, mind you; I hear the same thing spoken of women, too. I suppose it's all about people, really. I don't know how people find each other and then love each other. It seems I only find the ones who want a plaything, or a mummy, or someone who'll just quietly suffer their mess."

Mira snorted.

"Well, you know how it is." Evey held up a hand and ticked off the list: "There's the one who doesn't want you to meet his family, and the one who won't show you to his friends, the one who spends all of his time in the bottle, and the one who just can't be arsed to go to work. If you're really lucky, and I mean banging-lucky, you get all of these lovely bits rolled into one."

"Beneath your sweet and unassuming exterior beats the crusted-over heart of the true cynic," marveled Mira. "Now are you sure you don't want a real drink?"

"Maybe I should," said Evey. "I feel I need a proper drink to carry on with this conversation."

"And how. I'll fetch. Would you like another stout?"

"Yes, please."

Mira got Evey another and ordered a gin and tonic for herself. She carried the glasses back to the table.

"Here you are. Dark and bitter. The finest kind."

Evey grinned. "Cheers."

Mira took a drink and winced at the bite of the bubbles.

Evey swallowed. "So how secret is secret?"

"Very secret." The gin went straight to Mira's head. "Top-level secret. I really can't talk about it."

"Really," teased Evey. "You really can't."

"No."

"Well since I'm the only one here, then, I'll have to go ahead and break the news to you: you are talking about it."

Mira made a face and shook her head. "I'm not."

"Yes, you are. If I didn't know better, and thinking on it I really don't, but I'd say this a bit of a pity party. Oh poor me, so burdened down with my secret affair that I can't even look in the mirror and tell myself about it because it's a matter of national security." She leaned over her forearms. "And you know, it is all pointless secretiveness. Who cares? I mean no offense, and I'm sure your fellow is a fine one, but it's not exactly a secret that all those nasty old men like to fuck."

VIII.

Hairbrush. _Unpinned, smoothed out, not a hundred strokes because I refuse to count them in this beginning of shared silence._

IX.

Mira burst out laughing. Gin dribbled out of her nose.

"Oh! Oh shit, I'm sorry," said Evey, but she was giggling. "Oh my goodness, that must've hurt."

Mira nodded, still chuckling, the side of her hand held tight under her nose.

"Well, it's the truth," said Evey. "Politicians are notorious for it. Oh dear, would you like me to fetch you a napkin?"

"No. No, no, I'm all right. Really." Mira wiped her nose. "This is my best trick."

"Oh, really?"

"Oh yes. I can aim it, you know." She sniffled and winced. "Send it flying a clear meter."

"Why, you know, I'd bet even Chancellor Sutler has a girlfriend."

Mira's face fell into her hands and she laughed until she cried.

"Or maybe _mistress_ is the right word. It's not…it's not that funny…oh wait, oh wait, yes it is."

Mira tried to speak but she couldn't. She was laughing too hard.

"I'm imagining it. Oh, shit, I have to stop. That's it, my mind is violated. I shall never be the same again. Wait, wait." Evey gestured as if to clear the air. "Do you suppose they have like a sex curfew? You know, color coded and everything, like yellow means…buggery, and blue means…I don't know…missionary, but everyone has to be sound asleep before ten o'clock at night."

Mira covered her face with her hands.

Evey leaned over it and lowered her voice. "Maybe he has to look at the flag to get hard."

Mira laughed and cried and laughed until she couldn't laugh any more, and then she stared to sob.

"Oh! Oh shit, are you all right? I'm sorry." Evey scooted her chair around the table and put a hand on Mira's shoulder. "What is it? Do you want me to get you a napkin?"

"I'm not all right, I've gone fucking mental." A sharp laugh cut through the tears. "No, I'm…" Mira lifted up the skirt of her costume and wiped her face with it. "I've got this. It's all right."

"I don't think so," said Evey. "I'm going to get you another drink."

"I don't want another drink."

"What do you want, then?"

"I want to step out," she said. "I'm tired of feeling hidden."

X.

Re-member.

The word itself conjures the image of a littered mind, bits and pieces disjointed in the dark:

Dusky lilacs under my skin, plum-colored blossoms left behind by the delicate sting of an amorous whip: they whisper _you know they are all like spoiled children who don't know what deprivation really means_. The words are a window and through it I see dirty little boys eating a stew made out of entrails. There are gentle fingers on my bruises. Caressing, caressing and they smell like all the best parts of daytime.


	5. The Matter of Need

I.

_I do not love you except because I love you;  
I go from loving to not loving you  
From waiting to not waiting for you_

_ I love you only because it's you the one I love;  
I hate you deeply, and hating you  
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you  
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly._

_ In this part of the story I am the one who  
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you  
Because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood._

II.

It looked like the other houses in the neighborhood: large, gated, set in gardens and built of stone and covered in ivy. The door looked made of wood and the glass looked old, but it wasn't.

Mira pressed both thumbs side by side into a small screen below the doorknob. A tiny green light blinked twice and the lock disengaged with a quiet click. She pushed in the heavy door and stepped into a spacious entry. A large plain rug covered the polished hardwood floor. Impressionistic paintings of multicolored lilacs hung on the walls. Steady heat blew up through an ornate grate in front of the door and pushed back the lingering chill. Mira stood in the center of the small room and unwound her long wool muffler.

"Good evening, Ms. Larson. Could I have your voice print, please?"

"Of course, Roger." She shrugged out of her long coat. "How are you tonight?"

"Thank you. I'm well. How are you? Confirm, please."

"I'm well myself." She pulled off her boots and placed them on a mat beside the door. She draped the coat over her bent arm. "How's Mary?"

"She's well. Thank you. Hold still, please."

Mira looked straight ahead. She had no idea how the retinal scan technology worked, but she never saw or felt anything.

"Got me a lovely shot of your baby blues, Ms. Larson. Thank you so much."

"Give my love to Mary, will you?"

"Of course. It's nice to see you again."

"Good night, Roger."

The inner door unlocked. It also looked made of wood, like the outside door, but it wasn't. Mira crossed the threshold and a strong smell of roasting chicken and sautéed onions wafted into her nostrils. Her mouth watered and she smiled, thinking about the food. Her stomach growled as she hung her coat in the parlor closet. She patted her belly as she slid her feet into a worn pair of deerskin slippers. She passed through a darkened parlor and unwound the elastic in her hair, pulled it loose, and stuffed it into her jeans pocket.

"It smells delicious," she said. "Are you going to eat any of it or are you just going to look at me while I eat it?"

"I'll eat a little," he said. "I've already had one supper tonight, I'm afraid."

"Was that the…you know."

"The security conference?"

"Yes! That's the 'you know' in question." Mira loosened her hair with her fingers and went to the refrigerator. She reached in and grabbed a bottle of strawberry pop. "Clearly you actually do know, while I in fact actually do not." She smiled. "It's good to know that somebody knows and even better to know that someone is, in fact, you."

"Do you want any wine with your supper?"

"Nope." Mira twisted the cap off the pop bottle. "I'm going to drink this."

"I'm glad I didn't go through the trouble of liberating a bottle of chardonnay."

"Me too. Unless, of course, you'd like to have some. In which case I'll go get it."

"I don't think so." He shook a pan of sautéing onions. "I'm afraid I've just never acquired the taste for it."

Mira shrugged. "It's good, but so are other things. Would you like any help?"

"No." He added split artichoke hearts to the pan. "I have it all in hand, thank you."

"How long?"

"Fifteen minutes, or thereabouts. Have a seat."

"I'd rather play, if you don't mind."

"No, I don't mind at all."

Mira put the cap back on the pop bottle. She left the bottle on the edge of the gray stone counter and disappeared into the parlor.

III.

She begins with a bit of Chopin, waltz in C sharp minor, peeling the notes off like a wrapper. She shifts from that into something else, some tune that I don't recognize, and then she throws that off for the Moonlight Sonata, and her fingers slow down and play it like drops of water sliding on top of each other. There is illumination hidden in the notes, a faint wavering impression bent by layers and spilled across the ceiling. She transitions out, falls into aimless cascading scales, and they quicken into the Rondo Alla Turca, but this rendition is played at one third the speed Mozart intended.

I call out over the noise: "What is it you're doing with that?"

"What?"

"I said, what are you doing with that? It sounds…well, the first word that comes to mind is 'haunted.'"

"I'm just slowing it down. It's an exercise I give to my students. I figure I should probably do it myself once in awhile so I don't forget how."

"It's very interesting."

She offers no reply. Her notes have come around full circle and they take hold of her, carrying her back to the Chopin. This time she waltzes through to the end.

"I'll reverse it as well, have them play a slow piece two or three times faster, but the interpretation never sounds as interesting." As she speaks, her fingers drift through a languid, absentminded nocturne. "It fosters the development of muscle memory. After awhile, playing at the proper speed feels like nothing and while this may sound fearsome it's not. It just means that you no longer have to think about it."

"You make it sound very easy."

"It is easy, for some. It's not supposed to be easy for all. Otherwise everyone would be a musician and I would be out of a job. Still it takes years of proper training."

"To play a nocturne without thinking about it?"

"Yes."

"The chicken is out. It'll be on the table shortly."

"All right, then."

She walks back into the kitchen, her feet lighter and quicker. She moves into the kitchen light and stands up on tiptoe to open the cupboard. Her hair is loose and it keeps falling into her face and she shakes it away, carrying the plates onto the table. I think _this is muscle memory forgetting all the labor of learning how to be anything_ and though I have seen this gesture a thousand times each time moves it deeper into her body, each time writes it a little larger, and when I read her secret words they turn over a thousand different things inside of me.

IV.

"How are you tonight?"

"I'm tired." Mira watched him cut into the chicken. "How are you?"

"Exhausted."

"I can serve myself, you know. Sit down."

"Of course you can. But you won't."

"All right. I'm not going to argue."

"I have no real fondness for it. Arguing, that is."

"I know that."

"Now Lewis, on the other hand." He transferred the meat to a plate. "Lewis just loves to argue. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Um, yes. I would agree with that."

"And he's so good at it. Would you agree with that as well?"

"Uh. I suppose I would. Yes."

"What else is he good at?"

"I don't…I don't see where you're going with this." She tried to keep it down but the fire rose into her cheeks. "I'm afraid I'm not following the relevance of this. Would you explain it to me please?"

He arranged chicken and vegetables on the plate, and set the plate in front of her. "Yes, you do."

Mira picked up her fork. "Are you going to ask me a question, or are we going to eat?"

"I am a firm believer in making the most use of one's time and I don't see why we can't eat and talk at the same time, people do it every day. Don't you feel like talking?"

Mira held the fork in midair. "Are you angry?"

"I did not deserve that sort of treatment, Mira."

"And what sort of treatment are we talking about, Adam?" She gestured in a circle with the fork. "Just so we're clear. I don't want to fight about the wrong thing."

The muscles in his jaw got tight and he cut himself a small piece of chicken and transferred it onto his plate.

"Now is this about the part where I agreed to attend the gala with him, or is this about the part where I went, or is it really about the screwing because for one thing I'm sure you know about it and to tell the truth here I can't figure which chafes you the most. I'm shocked that it chafes you at all." The fork started to tremble and she put it down. "I should go home."

"This doesn't feel like home to you?"

"It doesn't matter how it feels, because it isn't, and why isn't it? I've had my thumbs and my voice and my eyeballs programmed into this place for the last two goddamned fucking years. Why don't I live here? Now _that's_ something I'd really like to know. If you really want to know what Lewis is good at, it's quite simple: he'll be seen in public with me."

"Are you going to step out with him again?"

"I don't know. He's asked, but I've put him off."

"Do you want to?"

"Sometimes."

His eyebrows went up. "What kind of answer is 'sometimes'?"

"It's a truthful one. Yes, sometimes I think it might be nice to leave the house, which isn't something you and I have ever done. Look, I didn't want to get into these things with you tonight, I just wanted to come here and eat something, because I haven't eaten anything at all since lunchtime and you are quite honestly the best cook I've ever known, but if you're going to…fling the damned gauntlet at me, fine. I'll pick it up. I'll admit to sleeping with Lewis and I'll even admit to liking it. If you're going to get angry because you're jealous then some things need to change."

"Such as?"

"Well, to begin with, you could ask me to marry you. And if that's too much you could ask me to move in, and if that's too much you could simply ask to be the only one, which you've never done!"

Silence.

Mira picked up her plate. She stood with it and a piece of artichoke rolled off the edge of the plate and plopped onto the tablecloth. She picked it up with trembling fingers. "I'm going into the bedroom," she said. "I'm going to eat and I'm going to cry where I don't have to look at you while I do it and when you have something to say you may come in and say it. And if you don't find any words…well, once I've had enough of crying and eating, and if you haven't spoken to me about any of this, I'm going to go home." She swallowed. "And if that happens I probably won't come back."

"Mira…"

"I've had enough. It's been a long time. Please think before you speak."

He watched her walk out of the kitchen. She sniffled once in the hallway before ascending the stairs in the dark and he heard nothing more until she closed the door, and after that he heard only silence.

V.

I pull my emotions apart like the chicken on my plate and chew them up and swallow them to soothe the hollow gnawing inside. I feel the door open before I hear it and I wipe the butter off my face. The shaking settles into my wrists. "Don't you tell me that you're old and that it's dangerous because I know those things already and they don't matter." His feet are bare, and I reach out and touch their insteps. "They don't matter to me because I won't allow them to, and if you don't love me or you don't want me anymore or you don't want anything to be different, those are real reasons and I'll do my best to start living with them, I won't understand them at first and maybe I'll never understand them but that's all right, I guess I don't have to. I won't have excuses." I sniffle. "Excuses are bullshit. Don't feed me bullshit."

He lets a hand settle on my head. I turn sideways so I'm leaning my face against the edge of the bed and I run the backs of my fingers across the bones in his ankles.

"Mira." His voice loses a bit of strength. "Please tell me what you need."

"I love you." I hold my trembling chin in my hands. "I need everything or I'll have nothing but I can't continue this. Fuck I can't stand crying in front of you, I can't bloody stand it, not like this, not this way. I have to stop."

"You don't have to stop."

"Yes." I cover my face. "I have to."

"No." He gets down on his knees beside me. "You don't."

I push the heels of my hands into my eyes and sob into the insides of my forearms. I hate the pathetic wrenching sound of it. I hate the shaking even more and I try to keep my shoulders still and I hate the way I look as though I'm going to break apart. He breathes on my hairline in slow measured breaths. I press my wrists into my cheekbones until the dull pain turns sharp and it makes more tears, fresh salt churning and my breath burning between my ribs, filling me with heat and with shame. I curl up on the floor and wipe my cheeks on his thighs. The tears soak in. He touches my neck and moves the hair off my back. I turn my head and rest one cheek on his lap. His hands go beneath my shirt to hold my shoulder blades. My wings, pressed close to my quivering muscles. His palms are big and warm.

"What do you need?"

I sniff. "I need to be here."

"Here on the floor?"

"Yes." I swallow. "For a little while."

"Tell me when you've had enough."

"I will."

I stay still until my joints ache and my bones groan. They are little anchoring bits of pain. He is warm wrapped up in his gray twill. I can't breathe through my nose and so like a perfumer I try in my mind to construct the scent of this room: there is the warmth of skin seeping up while the sheets hold a hint of lavender and the dust caught in the carpet will smell dry when any sort of heat hits it. Rain with a touch of exhaust and fresh grass hangs in the heavy curtains. My fingers curl up beside my nose. I know they smell like onions and my tongue like strawberries and steamed chicken blood gilded with the green musk of artichokes. Scents without names hide deep in the chemistry of my body.

"Tell me the truth," I whisper.

"What do you want to know?"

"Do you love me?"

"Of course."

"Do you want to marry me?"

A pause. "Yes."

"What does that pause mean?"

He sighs and moves hair away from my face. "It means many things."

"Will you tell me?"

"I've been remiss. I feel like a fool. Those are the first two."

"Why?"

"I thought you didn't want a public sort of life. I felt that I was honoring your wishes and I was in error and I'm sorry. It was never my intention to make you feel unloved. I should've seen that in you and I didn't. Don't make excuses for my lack of perception. I won't happen again."

"I won't make excuses, though I want to."

"I know you want to. I trust your capability to decide what kind of life you'd like to have, and if living your life as a part of mine is worth sacrificing the life you now have, I respect you enough to shut my mouth and accept it. I do love you. I don't think I'm worthy of you, but what I think of myself doesn't much matter. If you are going to love me on the outside, it is what you think of me that matters."

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does. Why wouldn't it matter?"

"Because if anything was going to change it would have by now. None of this matters. It's all bullshit."

"Change is never easy, Mira."

"I should go home. I should leave and never come back."

"Is that what you want?"

"No! No, but it's what has to be. Isn't it? Doesn't it have to be this way?"

"No, it doesn't have to be. Do you want it to be? Do you need this conflict?"

"Don't you?"

"I don't think so. I never thought so. I'm pleased enough to have you here under any circumstances."

"Here, right here? In this moment?"

"Yes, Mira. In this moment. I love you in this moment as much as I have loved you in any other moment. How do I need to say this?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. I know you do. You always know, even when you don't."

"I don't. I want you to tell me no and you won't. I want all of this to be your idea. I want this to sink in and it won't. I just want to be normal, Adam, I want a normal life. Is that too much to ask?"

"You aren't going to have a normal life with me."

"I don't know how to make any of this feel real."

"Do you need a press conference? Do you need a big shiny ring? Do you need a debut?"

I put my arms over my head. I feel myself shaking and I want it to stop. "I need a reason for all of this emotion and this isn't good enough. It's not good enough. It's just not."

"Do you need me to hurt you?"

My head feels hot and the insides of my knees feel hot and tingly and in between are my cold hands all tangled up in my hair. My breath sweeps against the inside of my ribs like a pair of wings. "Yes." My teeth start to chatter. "Please."

"How shall I do it?"

"You may use your discretion."

And so he takes hold of my hair and wraps it twice around his fist before hauling me up away from the floor by the roots of my hair. The hot and the cold are forgotten by my flesh as the weight of my neck balances in the roots. I breathe in my own inverted scream, a flood of air pouring through the slats in my chest and drawing sharp hard little goosebumps. He pulls harder and I feel individual hairs surrender to the strain, popping out one at a time. The goosebumps spread up and down my length. Every pore blooms in a tiny shimmering drop of sweat. He draws my ear close to his mouth.

"Do you need more?"

"Y-Yes."

He hauls me up to my feet and it blinds me and make my eyes water, loosens my knees and tightens my groin.

"Hold on to something because I'm going to slap you," he murmurs. "I'm going to do it hard. It may bruise you. Is that all right?"

I take hold of the bedpost. "Yes."

The first strike flows through my neck, yanking my muscles before it spreads in a burning rush. My teeth dig into the inside of my cheek. Blood floats acidic on my tongue and he touches my cheekbone, a fingertip tracing a trembling line, and the line breaks my breath into jagged pieces. He hits the other side and this slap comes harder than the first, each knuckle exploding into my skin. Vigorous barbed roots burrow into my jaw and bladed blossoms unfold at the corners of my mouth. He kisses them one at a time, knows the flavors of their shadows. The flesh grows tender and starts to throb, turns restless beneath his fingers. He holds my face like it's a wild and temperamental thing, like each part will fly off into the sunset, and he kisses my mouth.

"Do you need more?"

My hands read the angles of his shoulders, his collarbones, his jaw and they murmur _you are sharp all over and so hard, and I want to kiss you until I bleed._ "No," I whisper. "Do you?"

His breath quickens. "Yes."

I touch his mouth. "What do you need?"

"I need you."

I hold the insides of his wrists to my mouth. "You have me." I kiss them into place. "I'm right here."

"I want you right here."

"Then have me right here," I whisper.

My clothes come off like old skin with buttons sewn on and it feels like skin that shouldn't have been there in the first place. It comes off with so much ease and underneath I'm so raw, so pink and tender. Every fingertip is a scream and a welcome invasion and each kiss takes something away and puts it back in some other place, smoothing it down. My brain dismantles with each sharp layer of sensation. The inside of me feels so tight but he takes it apart and all the pieces feel like they're in the right place. Everything is right. The minutes, my thighs, his teeth, his cock, my wrists, the blood in my face and the blood in my fists. My heart slams my orgasm through the roof of his mouth. It chokes him in pleasure. This is always a wet moment. This is always the same.

"Does it feel real," he murmurs. "Am I here for you now?"

A throb waits inside of me. "Are we ready for this?"

"I hope so," he says. "I hope so."

VI.

_There are ramifications and potential outcomes that would never occur to me  
But you're beautiful  
And I love you very much.  
Either way something like this will impact your image.  
Would you choose your own ring?  
Would you want to?  
Do you wish to continue working?  
Do you wish to have children?  
Are you afraid?  
Are you afraid?  
Are you afraid?  
Are you afraid?_

VII.

I am afraid for her. I am afraid _of_ her, but that doesn't matter. I have been afraid before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poetry in the first part of this chapter belongs to Pablo Neruda and it is excerpted in part.


	6. A Long Kiss Goodnight

I.

"What happened to your face?"

Though this is a restaurant with a subdued atmosphere and a piano tinkles its way in the background through skillful renditions of the classics, it is still a place that is full of ambient noise.

"Nothing," Mira says. "What happened to yours?"

Lewis favors her with an acerbic expression. "That isn't what I mean. You have a bruise on your left cheekbone, high up, where it just meets the intersection of your eye socket. It's gone to a lovely shade of yellow at the edges. Don't tell me you didn't notice it."

"I don't need to, since I have you to do it for me."

The waiter came and refreshed their drink orders, and he jotted down their dinner orders. When he had gone, Mira took a small sip of her Chardonnay.

"A fortnight of 'no, thank you' followed by such a quick and easy 'yes' tells me that you want something. So what do you want? More…money, to pad the walls of your venerable institution?"

"I'll have you know that you single-handedly sponsored the acquisition of a Stradivarius."

"Is that right?"

"You know, you are a very interesting person."

"I've always thought so. But I'll offer you a proper rejoinder." He leans back in is chair. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

Mira smiles a little. "I've read your file. I've done a fair bit of reading in the last fortnight, actually."

"How did you get a hold of that?"

Mira puts down her glass. "I asked for it."

"You know this whole aura of mystery thing doesn't suit you. I much prefer it when you're direct." His eyes moved across her face. "You're so very good at it, when you choose to be."

She touched a bit of loose hair at her temple. "Are you still focused on that bruise?"

"I wasn't, but since you've redirected my attention to it, I do feel compelled to mention that you haven't done much about it in the way of makeup. It looks like someone hit you."

"Maybe I fell into a statue."

"I want to know how it is that you read my file. I'd like to know why it was so easy for you to get it. That you were able suggests a couple of things: that there is a breach in security somewhere, or that you have acquired clearance, and both options frankly intrigue the fuck right out of me."

Mira smiles. The smile widens into a grin as she tilts her head sideways. "Have you read mine?"

"Yes." A corner of his mouth sharpens. "I have."

"I thought as much, but I'd wager you didn't read it until after the gala."

"Had you indeed wagered, it's a round you would've won." He picks up his glass and mocks a little toast.

"Chancellor Sutler gave it to me, because I asked him for it."

Lewis takes a long look at her; in that moment she feels her body language whispering in his eyes. He takes a measured sip of his wine and her words deconstruct in his face, the sounds that are her words, the inflections in voice and everything they could mean; all of those statistics calculate in the space of one breath. In each second of that moment his eyes are caught in her face, subject to the manner of her shoulders and the way her elbows are bent. Her fingers wrap around the stem of her glass. She picks it up and takes a slow sip and his eyes glide across the rising rim to settle on her face. Her eyes sink into his. Her mouth practices the art of waiting. His glance flicks across her breasts and into the hollow of her throat before he puts his glass down.

"You know the Chancellor," he says.

Mira's smile flickers inward. "Yes."

"How long have you known him?"

"A couple of years."

"How did you meet?"

"Well, for the first time when I was twelve, at my musical debut, but that was only social. We met properly when I was twenty-eight."

He appraises the slight flush in her cheeks. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I wanted to be honest with you."

"Well should I go ahead and send you a fucking thank-you note?"

"If you like, but there's no need. I'll accept your spoken thanks."

"Such a chilled delivery. Very nice. Now what sort of relationship do you two have?"

"The kind that gets married."

"I'm sorry?"

"Married, Lewis."

This time his look is careful. "How is it I know nothing about this?"

Her eyebrows went up. "Because it hasn't been announced yet?"

"This is the sort of thing I should know."

"You're right. That's why I just told you."

"It isn't your job to tell me. It's someone else's job."

"Hold on." Mira fishes the cell phone out of her little jeweled purse and initiates a call. She holds the phone to her ear. She listens to each ring and the pitch of her voice curls in on itself. "I'm…yes. I know…yes. No I haven't. I…all right." Mira's gaze peers out of her voice at him and she puts the phone in the center of the table. "Pick it up."

Lewis looks at the phone. "What is this?"

"It's my cell phone. Don't be afraid of it."

"I see what it is."

"Just pick it up."

He picks up the phone. "Hello?"

Mira fills her mouth with wine as the color fades out of the corners of his lips. She holds the glass near her chin. The waiter approaches the table and Lewis is startled by the movement. He listens to the voice on the other end of the phone. Mira glances at the waiter and watches Lewis. She offers a tiny smile to the waiter, shaking out her napkin. Lewis hangs up the phone and hands it back to her. She puts it back in her purse.

"I'm sorry you didn't believe me," she says.  
The waiter slides the plates of food onto the table.

"Thank you." Mira nods to the waiter. "Did you hear a word I just said?"

"Yes."

"I thought it was the polite thing to do."

"I imagine you did." Lewis shakes out his napkin. "And you're right, of course. It was and while it would be big of me to offer you congratulations, I don't think you'll be very surprised to learn that I am not that big. I have not yet reached the fuck off station on this conversational train, I will be arriving there shortly." He cuts into his lamb. "So do me a favor, will you?" He glances at her. "Shut the fuck up and eat."

"You will not speak to me that way. You can eat my food, or you can go goddamned hungry. I'm afraid I don't care much either way." Mira picks up her wine glass, empties it onto his plate, and stands up. "Good night, Lewis. Thank you so much for managing to travel from zero to prick in less than five seconds." She puts a hand on his shoulder and leans in over his hair. "I will say that you don't disappoint."

He looks up at her. "Are you going to tell me what happened to your face?"

"No."

"Why not?"

She looks into his eyes. "Because my face is none of your business."

II.

Forty-five minutes later I found myself choking on a room full of frocks with a nervous gray-haired woman standing in the middle of it, waiting for me to say something.

"Well, I'm not wearing any of these," I said.

"Ms. Larson, I assure you I have given my most careful consideration to each one of these ensembles." The woman had a polished accent. "All of them present you in the best possible way while remaining congruent with a greater message."

"I don't care. I'm not wearing any of these."

"Have you looked at any of them?"

"Where do you get this shit, anyway? These make me look exhumed. I haven't tried any of them on but I'm not stupid. Can't you bring in something that a woman under eighty might be caught dead in?"

She pursed her lips. A single eyebrow lifts into a perfect arch. "Allow me to do my job, Ms. Larson."

"If you're going to cheek me you might as well do it by my first name," I snapped. "And I told you that since my dead grandmother would come alive and dance the cha-cha with her moldy bones before allowing herself to be reburied in any of this crap, _I_ am not going to wear it to _bed_, let alone to anything that is going to be photographed or televised. Now, do you have anything else for me to look at?"

"I have dressed the Chancellor for ten years," she huffed.

"Constantine? Is that your name?"

She folded her arms.

"Why don't you take a good long look at me, Connie, and tell me this: do I look like a sixty-two-year-old man?"

"No. You do not."

"I didn't think so." My stomach growled. I looked at my watch. "Will there be anything else, then?"

"You need to be dressed by morning."

"Well then I suggest you get cracking. Go on, find something. Or we could skip this altogether and I could dress myself. I think I'll wear a flag and a smile. What do you think?"

Constantine blanched.

"Find me something red." I pulled a silk tie out of my purse. "Match it to this. Be sure the cut shows something rather than hiding something and that it doesn't show too much and that it isn't cut too close to the hips. The skirt should be tea-length, or approximately, and in lieu of stockings and fussing around with what style of pump best suits the frock I want you to find me a decent knee-high heeled boot. The leather should be a shade of brown harmonious with the shade of red, since black would be both too harsh and too obvious, and it should not resemble either a riding boot nor possess anything remotely resembling a stiletto heel. I will not look like a civil servant, someone's aunt, your mother, or a tart. Are these parameters firm enough for you, or do you need more detail?"

Thin color perched on Constantine's cheeks. "No, mum."

"Thank you." I draped the tie over the back of a chair. "Call me when you've found something. Oh, and don't get anything on this. I'm leaving."

"Very well, mum."

"Oh, one thing."

"What is it?"

"Would you please direct me to the nearest chip shop?"

III.

She is walking down the street and eating a piece of hot fish when the phone rings. "Yes?"

"What are you doing?"

"Eating. What are you doing?"

"Driving."

She wipes the grease off her mouth and takes the last of her lipstick with it. "You shouldn't drive and talk at the same time. It might be dangerous."

"Where are you?"

"What do you want?"

"I thought I'd tell you to fuck off properly. You know, to your face and all that."

"It's probably not a good idea." She digs around in her coat pocket for a napkin. "Can't you just tell me now?"

"I could but it doesn't feel the same."

She sighs. She tosses the empty wrapper into a trash barrel. "Can't you try?"

"I can't summon proper vehemence without seeing your face."

"Don't have much imagination, do you?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm on my way home."

"Will you be alone at your house?"

Mira glances at herself in a passing shop window. She wipes the lipstick off her wrist with a napkin. "I'm always alone at my house. But I'm not going to my house."

"I see."

"Listen, Lewis, if you do it over the phone it'll hurt just as much. I promise. Would you like me to cry for you? I'm sure I can generate a lone picturesque tear or two."

"Aren't you a high-riding bitch."

She threw away the napkin. "It's been said before and it will be said again, I'm afraid."

"And are you proud?"

"Some days. The rest I'm just tired. I apologize for drowning your lamb chop."

Silence.

"And really, if you're going to call me names I'm going to hang up. I'm sorry for the lamb chop and I'm sorry for fucking you. I really shouldn't have done either, but they seemed like such good ideas at the time."

"Fuck off."

"See, there you go." Mira paused at a curb before crossing the street. "I knew you could do it. Would you like to say it again?"

"Would you please tell me where you are?"

"Yes. I could do that."

She glances at the street signs and the landmarks, describes them in detail, and hangs up the phone. He tries to call again but she won't pick up. She stands still on a corner and waits the fifteen minutes for his car to drift up alongside the curb.

"Would you just get in this goddamned fucking car?"

"Well, could you stop it first? I can't very well get in a moving target."

The car rolls to a complete stop. She opens the door and climbs inside and slams the door into the wall of heat. Her teeth chatter in gratitude, her jaw muscles aware of the sudden shift in ambient temperature and trying to catch up. He adjusts the heat.

"Where are you going?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Look, I know there's a safe house but I don't know where it is."

"I know," she said. "That's why I can't tell you how to get there."

"Well, give me a goddamn destination. I can't just drive you around London half the night."

"It is awfully warm in here," she says.

"I know, I try to keep it even but the heater on this thing just won't quit."

"That's all right. I like it."

"Are you going to tell me where to go?"

Mira bursts out laughing. "Given the current context that's actually really funny. I'm sorry to be laughing at your expense, but I can't help it. It is funny. Come on. You must admit that it's funny."

"Funny like the red red roses of syphilis a-bloom in your wife's face," he mutters.

Mira laughs harder.

"Would you fucking cut it out? I'm trying to be all gallant or some such ridiculous shit and your laughter is cutting into my style." He tries not to smile and fails, but manages to keep it small. "Please tell me where to go." His hands flex on the wheel. "I have to take you somewhere."

"The red red roses of syphilis?"

"You know what they say: unlike true love, herpes does last forever."

"You know, I'm so tired." Mira giggles. "I don't think I've ever been this tired. It's like I never stop moving. It's a lousy excuse for being such an awful bitch, I know it, but now I'm going to go home and get too little sleep and then I have to get up in the morning and put myself on television with a stupid dress and a stupid hairstyle and I just hate it. I hate it. I don't know how any of you do this. Why does it feel so much like getting ready for an execution?"

"Because it is, for you, I suppose." He shrugs. "The rest of us did it a long time ago. You're kissing life as you know it good-bye. Sometimes it's a long awful kiss full of razorblades and it's a bloody fucking mess, but…"

Mira's phone rings. "Yes? Oh, I'm on my way right now. I did, but they were all horrible. Completely. Yes. Well, she's going to have to get over it…I think I will do that, I know she's done fine by you…all right. I don't care, at this point I'll wear anything that doesn't make me look like…no, that isn't what I meant. I know I must represent, and though it sucks vigorously and with every single fiber of my being I will tolerate it because I have to. Well…yes. That's right. I do."

Lewis lowers his voice. "Mira, just tell me where to go."

"…I would absolutely love that, thank you so much, yes. All right. All right." Mira takes out a piece of paper, scrawls an address, and tosses it onto the dash. "No, I've got a ride. I'm fine. How are you? I feel terrible for not asking…oh, I see. Well…all right. I will be home soon. Yes. Soon. No, I'm not going to get into…Lewis is driving me. Yeah. Well, he does now…oh. Is that right? Indeed. I see. I will see you soon. Yes." She smiled. "Yes. Good-bye." She snaps the phone shut. "He says that you already know where the house is."

"I was under the impression that it had been relocated, but security is not my purview."

"Oh. I guess it was moved for a time…about five years ago, maybe? And then it was moved back." Mira moves hair out of her face. "You wouldn't believe what's been done to the place. I think you could grout it with plastique and set it off and the damn walls would just laugh at you."

Lewis says nothing.

"You'd never know it, though. Not from the outside. Well not from the inside, either. It just looks like a house." The phone rings again. "Yes? Do you have my frock? Does it match the tie properly? I'm going to kick a goddamned arse square if it doesn't because I don't have time for this shit, really I don't. Well, do _you_ think it matches? Can't you look? Adam…put it under a full-spectrum lamp and look at it that way. The lamps in the bedroom…since I prefer to keep my eyes in my head while I'm reading and it's most inconvenient when they fall out, yes they are full-spectrum. They seem to…all right, I'm not going to bother to ask about the boots. I trust they don't look whorish. Well, because that would be the first thing out of your mouth if they were, and since… all right. I'm hanging up now because I'm being rude." She sighs and closes the phone and holds it tight in her fist. She rests the fist on her heart. "I'm sorry about that. Would you like to tell me to fuck off again? Go ahead. I'm sure I've earned it."

"No, that's quite all right."

The car rolls up to the gate.

"Thank you," says Mira. "I do appreciate it."

"I know." He takes hold of her hand. "I will see you around."

"Good-bye, Lewis." She squeezes. "I will see you around."

He watches her climb out of the car and disentangle her skirt from the strap of her purse, and he waits until she is on the other side of the gate before driving away.

IV.

In the driveway my phone rings. I want to pull loose one of the cobbles, drop the phone in the hole, and smash it into smithereens. "Hello?"

"I've spoken with the Chancellor regarding your dress," says Constantine. "And your boots, and also your jewelry."

"I am aware of that. I have spoken to him regarding my dress. And my boots."

"Then you are aware that I had everything sent to the house?"

"I am at the house right now, but I'm not inside, and so I can't look at the dress or the boots, but I will let you know immediately, once I can get inside." I prop the phone beneath my chin. "I will call you back."

"The Chancellor has given his approval."

"That's all well and dandy, Connie. May I call you Connie?"

"Of course, mum."

The door unlocks and I step into the entry. The air blowing up out of the grate is too warm, and I yank my coat off. "As I was saying, that's all well and dandy, but you still need my approval."

"With all due respect…"

"Adam's not wearing the dress." I kick the shoes off. "I am. And I'm very capable of dressing myself. I can't speak for you, but I mastered that particular skill set a long time ago."

"Ms. Larson, if I may speak."

"Go ahead. Voice print."

"Thank you, Mira. I've got enough. Just hold your eyes still."

"It is my professional opinion that while you may have mastered that particular skill set, as you have so sharply elucidated, you have little experience in dressing to present yourself politically, that is as a part to a larger whole. I'm afraid your personal taste doesn't have much to contribute."

"Well, what the bloody fucking hell is this, then, some sort of goddamned Miss Norsefire pageant? Are you going to teach me how to put on a plastic smile and wave from balconies and how to cross my legs like a lady?" The inside door opens and I stumble into the house like a wet cat. "I'll tell you one thing, Connie: this damned frock had better work, or you are going to be one tired stylist come morning and following _that_ you will no longer work for me. You may work for Adam until you're stiff in the coffin, but this will _not_ be a family affair. Have I made myself clear? Has the clue arrived?"

"I do wish you would calm down."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," I snap. "I'm hanging up now. I will call you back. Do not call me again tonight."

I hang up the phone and turn it off.

"I see you're home."

"I am _not_ Miss Norsefire!"

"The colors seem to match, but I await your judgment."

"Where are they?"

"In the bedroom."

I look around for my slippers, walk in a ragged circle, and throw my hands toward the ceiling. The stockings turn the bottoms of my feet into half-assed ice skates. I slip a little, grab hold of the doorway, steady myself, and haul up my skirt. "She's horrid, Adam, and she has no taste."

"Now, I'm not sure that's entirely true."

I push down one stocking. "Well, maybe in the case of men. She can dress a man, I'll give her that much. Was she a tailor in a former life?"

"No, she was a psychologist who worked in advertising, and she transitioned from there into public relations, and from there she began her career as an image consultant." He folds his arms and smiles a little. "Are you taking issue with my presentation?"

"What?" I hop on my bare foot and yank the stocking off the other leg. "No, no, of course not. Did you see any of the things she picked out? I mean, did you really look? Hideous. Completely hideous. I wouldn't dress my dog in that shit." I unfasten the skirt and let it fall. I step out of it, scoop it up off the floor, and walk with it up the stairs. I unfasten a shirt button with each step, peel the shirt off at the head of the stairs, and toss the lot onto the floor. "If you hear a bloodcurdling scream you'll know this fucking dress is my worst fucking nightmare come true."

"And what are you going to do then?"

"Scream." The bra lands on top of the shirt. "And then I'll get in the bathtub and threaten to never come out again."

"And then?"

"Cry."

"And what then?"

"I'll eat enough chocolate to sink a freighter."

"And what, pray tell, follows that?"

I smile a little. "You are an awful man who is cranking me up just to see how far I'll go."

"That might be true. Do you still want pistachio biscuits?"

"Very much."

"If I allow you in the bathtub, will you promise to come out?"

"It depends. Is the dress really awful?"

"Mira. Please take a breath."

I push out a sigh and walk into the bedroom. The dress hangs inside an opaque black bag and the boots are in a big caramel-colored box on the foot of the bed. I approach the bag and there are little needles in my eyes, getting hotter. I don't want to pull down the zipper because I don't want to see. What I want more than anything is to close my eyes and leave them closed for as long as they want to be shut away from the world, but I can't, I have to look at this dress first. I unzip the bag and silk pushes through the gap. I know without checking that it matches the tie, a shade that balances at the mythic intersection of blood, rose, ruby, and pomegranate, but later I'll pick up the tie and check because the proper way is to measure twice and cut once, and there's no point in doubling the effort when the stuff is inferior. The cloth is good quality. I pull the bag off the hanger. I take in the cut and the drape and when the needles in my eyes start to burn something inside me turns to ash.

"Goodness, is it really that bad?"

"No." I wipe the tears off my cheeks. "It's perfect."


	7. 9 Words

I.

I would tell you of my imprisonment and the look of stone configured in his teeth and my bread-scented fingers. I would tell you these things.

I expect that no one will understand how a blossom is made out of meat and how a branch cries out when you step on its dry back, dividing it into past and present. I wanted the mythical stone inside my heart. I believed it into life and yearned for his hands inside there, worrying it loose. I couldn't do it on my own. I can't always do things on my own though it is the fate of all human beings to find themselves crashed up against that wall, or stopped by a throat full of leaves, or dissolved into their own tears; I can't always do things on my own and I am better for admitting it. Some folks want to be shattered against a wall like an old brick. Some need the thorns more than others, can only read words scrawled into the shallowest layers of skin drawn in pulsating blood-beads and can only smell the iron. They will follow the smell to where they need to go.

Hold back the skin and prize out the fermenting center. Hold it in your hands. Go on. I'll wait.

II.

I want sweat  
And skin all slick with  
The things I'm not supposed to be  
With you inside, the wiry hairs  
Lost  
And striving striving striving  
Toward the wall.

I ponder your mouth  
In excess  
Of your flesh and  
Want the feeling of your belly  
Because I want sweat,  
Kindled out of flesh  
And contentment.

III.

Excerpted from The Rise and Fall of Norsefire England (Finch and Hammond, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2045):

_High Chancellor Adam Sutler and Mira Larson were married on 25 May in the restored year of 2035. Older folks who remembered earlier days compared the opulence of the media event to past royal marriages. A year and a half later Mira L. Sutler resigned her post as a professor of musical theory and renowned piano instructor at the People's Conservatory of Music to give birth to their daughter._

IV.

The visibility is crippling. One at a time my old acquaintances are stripped away and though they were shallow of meaning any meaning at all is missed when it's taken away.

I miss that cell. I long for it with a mouthful of nighttime stars drawn cold in a black soup, holding back my screams. I would scream for you until my voice bounced off the face of the moon. I would take in all of the blood and my anger and send it forth in a handful of purple fruits, and I would crush those fruits beneath my dainty toes and use the yeast of my womb to till the juice into something worth the price of intoxication and madness. I would be drunk on you, I would beg please, please let me go back into that cell, please, I left my yearning inside there and I want it back.

I would hide in the shadow of you only to come out when in the fullness of my secret self, dressed in all those things I never knew.

V.

Excerpted from The Rise and Fall of Norsefire England (Finch and Hammond, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2045):

_Sarah Evelyn Sutler was born on 21 December in the restored year of 2037, in a bunker medical suite, attended by a hand-selected medical staff. Mrs. Sutler would remain vigilant on matters of personal security for the duration of the Norsefire regime._

VI.

There is a video of a woman, and the woman is strung up and being whipped with a cane. You are watching this video and I am watching you watching it. I cannot connect with her but I can connect with you because you are here. I know she is me but she doesn't feel like me; she feels like a fortunate lost and ripe-scented soul while I am here in this room with you, watching you watching her. The energy of it flows back and forth between you and the images on a screen and me, trapped in the amber of this room and the amber of this screen. I am here and I am there and I am inside you and I want you   
inside me.

VI.

Excerpted from The Rise and Fall of Norsefire England (Finch and Hammond, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2045):

_A number of reforms are attributed to Mira Sutler during this time, including increased personal security measures surrounding vital party members, the introduction of musical education to students showing excellence in the maths and sciences, and the founding of the government-sponsored publication Norns, a periodical designed to promote the literary voice of Norsefire women._

VII.

By the time I'm asleep I've lost my fortitude and the lost road becomes a pillow, the pavement a blanket.

What of it, my dreaming mind will say. Oh it doesn't speak in so many words, but rather converses in those images and textures and smells that drift up out of the past and slide themselves into places hollowed out by the future. A scent of roses growls in my guts and the ruins murmur promises of home. A sweetly ravaged landscape, a city devastated by love. That is what I see.

VIII.

Now come days of doubt,  
Cold and sharp and  
Taken like a tonic.

The first explosion was the last.  
I love you.  
I love you.  
I love you.  
Nine words could never be enough.

IX.

Excerpted from The Rise and Fall of Norsefire England (Finch and Hammond, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2045):

_Following the assassination of High Chancellor Adam Sutler on the fifth of November in the restored year of 2039, Mira Larson Sutler fled the country. Though it is rumored that she and her daughter took up residence in southern Australia, at the time of this writing her whereabouts are unknown._


	8. Limousine Dream (Interlude)

_I wore the silver-backed dress, the one made with winter-sky silk and decorated with tiny sequins sewn in a scatter designed to reflect the light because I knew the lighting in the opera house the way an artist knows the slant of the sun at any given hour of the day; I chose the silver-backed dress with the handful of little sequins because they would sparkle, and it would be the sparkle of a fine jewel instead of something cheap. I wanted to be noticed. I knew I would be if only for the fact that I had requested to play over the protests of my employer and the school, who had wanted to showcase one of the students in a double attempt to curry favor on behalf of the school and to offer some vision of national pride; I had requested to play, though I was not a student or the fresh face of Norsefire youth._

A shift happened outside of time as it was measured by my skin and though I was twenty-eight years old, I was too young to wish for any other reckoning. I knew that my skin felt different in those moments I spent near him, that my skin lost hold of its clock and that the ticking whispered for notes and other things that sparkle. I did not connect the feeling to the flushes I felt in girlhood or the phantom delirium of my birth into young womanhood. When I thought of it at all, I did not recognize it as holding any significance beyond my desire for the dress, for the performance, for wearing the dress in front of certain eyes.

When the lights came up again, I found a glass of champagne and sweated into the dress and felt cold. It was always chill in the opera house and the addition of a little sweat guaranteed a shiver. I waited in the back. This I remember well, my chattering teeth and my knees held close together so they wouldn't follow the lead of my teeth, hiding in the back where it was darker and tremulous with the colliding murmurs of people in the front and the dissonant sound of instruments being neglected by their owners. The magic came apart in the noise as it always did following a performance and the realm of noise was relegated from the divine back to the prosaic. I felt sick in those moments, nursing my glass of champagne and waiting for something I could not identify, my belly hollowed out and subject to the hidden whims of my skin and waiting for the moments to shift or to not shift. I wearied of the shift in time and wanted it to stop or not stop. It was like waiting on the bloom of a flower.

And he said, How are you tonight?__

And I said, I'm cold.__

There were more words but they are intermediate notes that mean nothing beyond making the transition from one phrase to another; I'm sure he thanked me, and I'm sure he told me how wonderful I was, I'm sure I demurred as I was taught to do in the presence of admirers and high government officials alike, but those words are lost in a haze of looking. As I looked at him, the words slid off and melted into my sense of time, busy doing its slow turns across my skin, sweeping me full of vertigo and burying the disorientation of it in the tips of my nerves. I imagined in that way, the ticking of my internal clock sounding at the tips of my nerves, sending signals through me that clashed and clanged upon one another and made it difficult to listen. My mind filled with something new. I peered through it and saw him, and the seeing was enough.

Discussion came in the form of others, and I felt myself smile through the howling that was happening within me, felt a tightness of experience that tasted new and intoxicating. I spoke and while I remember my words, I don't remember them in the order they happened; yes and no and lovely and thank you and how are you tonight and where did you get those earrings and I see, oh yes, I see. I remember them tumbling over his, slithering on top of them and holding them down, a thing I did not dare to think of but my words were bolder than I and they strutted and knew no fear. They brushed against him and stroked with their whole length like cats, curling tails of hidden seductive intention beneath his chin. I started to blush. With it came the heat that chased the chill away. Borne on the heat came the knowledge of what I was doing and in that thought I was struck cold again.

He touched my fingers. He took two of them in two of his own and curled them around mine, held them there just long enough for the skin to get warm. My blood went to my head, rushed to my feet, rebounded and spread everywhere beneath the surface of my skin. I became my blood. I was a steaming lake of it, vapors curling up and off into the night, and I felt like everyone in the back of the opera house could smell me and taste my intent. I thought they could hear the murmur of my red tides. I pulled myself inward though I had never felt such harmony with my blood and had never heard its voice the way I heard it in that moment. I had never felt its firm heated courses through my flesh or my dependence on it for life, and I had never yearned for life so much. I had never wanted to look at someone so much. I had never looked at someone the way I looked at him. I had never felt a touch linger so long after its departure. I felt it catch the adrenaline loose in my blood and burn it off. I inhaled the flames and touched him back, a graze of fingertips on the back of his wrist.

When I dream about this, it is darker in the night than it was. It is warmer inside the limousine than it was. Sometimes I am wearing the wrong dress and have the wrong flavors on my tongue and once I dreamed music where there was none and silence where there was none, all of it underscored with the breath that was there, because it was the only thing that was there. I didn't say anything as I climbed into the car and he didn't say anything when he opened his arm to me and I kept the silence in my mouth as moved close and succumbed to the fullness of my shaking.

In this dream I think happy birthday._ There will only be five more._


	9. Hate

I.

I opened the front door and looked out through the screen. She looked familiar in a way I could not place: a little dark-haired lady who was pretty before the haggard lines tightened at the corners of her face and pulled them until she looked so tight, so on edge that the slightest provocation would produce an outburst. An outburst or an inburst, and while women tend to turn all of the rage in on themselves this one had a crackling air about her; she looked every inch the bursting-out kind. She stood in the shade of the stoop, backlit by the blast-furnace sun, a small languid child held up to her chest. Her daughter's head lolled against her shoulder, and the girl's hair was like her mother's, loose and knotted full of curls. The little girl wore a rumpled blue cotton dress with button straps and no blouse. Looking down at her tiny bare shoulders made me aware of the crushing heat, a constant disdain lit afire in the sky and left burning all day and all night. The woman leaned close to the screen and peered into my face.

"You're Will," she said.

I stepped back. "Yes."

"If I didn't know you by your name I'd know you by your face." She shifted the child higher. "It's aged the same way. My goodness."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Adam's wife."

I pushed opened the screen. "Come in."

"Thank you, thank you so much," she said all in a rush, and the torrent of the words stirred in the child and the child lifted her head and looked around once before letting her cheek collapse back onto her mother's shoulder. Her mother's face creaked and almost cracked but didn't. The fullness of their exhaustion came out to me; the woman's very bones cried out for sleep, their desire muffled by the forward drive of her flesh. Her skin was full of ceaseless motion, gleaned off a long dusty road and packed away tight in the center of her heart. She walked into the lounge and put her daughter down on the couch and the little girl rose out of her stupor. She ate up the inside of my house with her eyes, turning her head around, as if wondering where the sun had got off to and where all this blessed cool darkness had come from. "Thank you so much for being here. You don't know what this means to me."

"Would you like some tea?"

"Only if it's cold."

"Mira, isn't it? And Sarah."

"Yes, I'm Mira and this is Sarah. Say hello, Sarah."

The little girl looked up at me with big tired eyes in a solemn face. I could see a bit of Adam trapped in her eyebrows, but her mother lived in her chin and her nose was like a round little button and her mouth was still a soft little girl's mouth. She rolled back into the couch and picked up one of her feet. She bit her lip and focused her attention on her leg, pulling it tight up beneath her skirt. She pulled on the skirt and turned her body away from me before looking at me sidelong beneath her eyelashes. "Hi," she whispered.

"Are you sleepy, Sarah?"

She bit her index finger and nodded.

"Would you like to go to sleep?"

Her eyes shifted to her mother.

"Honey, it's okay, you can go to sleep," said Mira. "I'll get your blanket and your bear out of the car."

Sarah squirmed around on the cushions.

"It's time for your nap." Mira firmed her tone. "Lie down, please."

Sarah pushed herself close to the back of the couch and leaned over onto her side, curling up as tight as she could into the corner. She tucked her folded hands beneath her cheek. Her skirt bunched up in the back and her knees rubbed together and her eyes remained open and heavy-lidded and watchful.

"It's all right, honey." Mira smoothed down her dress and stroked her sweaty hair. "I'll be right here."

"I'll get that cold tea for you," I said.

"Thank you. Make it a big glass, if you don't mind. I'm so thirsty."

I went into the kitchen and opened the freezer. A blast of cold air wafted over my face and the ice cubes steamed as I prized them loose from their tray and dropped a handful each into a couple glasses. I filled the glasses with iced tea, listening to the murmuring of soft voices in the lounge passing back and forth. When I came back out with the glasses in my hands, Mira was sitting beside her daughter on the couch and singing in a very quiet voice, the kind that feels like a wish made out of patience. The little girl's eyes were closed and her body had gone soft into the cushions. Mira stroked her head and sang, the words old and slow, tears rolling down her cheeks. She kept them out of her voice and sang until it was a whisper set to a gentle falling tune, and when she'd stopped, the little girl was fast asleep.

"I haven't heard that song in a very long time," I said.

"I don't imagine you have." Mira moved a loose section of hair out of her eyes and looked up at me. "Thank you for the tea."

"The reports are starting to come in on the news," I said. "But I haven't seen anything yet. I…assume it was a political death?"

She wiped her nose. "Of course it was. I don't want to talk about it."

"Very well," I said. "Would you like something to eat?"

"I don't know how you live in this heat." She fanned her face. "It's like driving through an oven. I thought the guy at the fill-up station was exaggerating about bringing water. I'm glad I listened to him."

"Where did you come in?"

"Perth."

"You drove all the way here from Perth alone?"

"Well yes," she snapped. "What choice did I have? There's only me, you know. I'm it."

Sarah stirred a little but did not wake. Mira put a calming hand on her back.

"I might've met you there and assisted," I said. "You could've rang."

"And you might not have."

I felt cold in my belly. "Yes, I might not have. I suppose that's true. I'll fix you something light if you want it."

"I don't want anything."

"You may have my bed if you want to sleep. There's an A/C unit in there. I'm afraid the central does what it can but it sometimes just isn't enough."

"I'm so tired, I don't know if I'll be able to sleep or not," said Mira. "I've struggled to stay awake for so long that it's hard for me to slow down. But I'll lie down with Sarah. The cool would do us both a world of good, I think."

Mira looked at the sweating glass of tea clasped her hand and noticed for the first time that she had picked it up. It left a ring behind on the coffee table and I felt a strange urge to bend over and lick up the moisture with my tongue; it had been wrung out of the air and that alone made it worth something more than ordinary water, it was time and it would be bitter and I wanted to mark the moment. Her eyes went out of focus and she seemed unsure of where the glass had come from, or where she was, or what was happening. She inspected the amber lights caught in the glass and lifted it up to her mouth and started to drink. The ice cubes tumbled down over one another and slammed into her mouth. She tilted her head back, the muscles in her throat straining. The silence filled with her hard, vigorous swallows.

"You don't want to do that," I said.

She stopped drinking and cut me with her cold blue eyes. "You don't want to tell me what to do. You should know that upfront."

"You'll sick it up if you drink too fast."

"I won't," she said.

She drained off the glass and put it down on the coffee table and gathered up her daughter with the long careful practice of a mother. Sarah jostled but didn't wake. I led them to my bedroom and pulled the shades tight against the brightness of the sun and turned on the A/C unit. It was old and noisy but more efficient than it looked. I expected Mira would complain about the noise, for herself or for Sarah; that she'd come out of money shone in her skin and inscribed itself into every gesture, how tenderly she chafed against such a new rough life. I would've known she'd been born rich without Adam's letters. She came across as both cultured and competent. Her body performed the motions of putting her child to bed, an ancient somnambulant dance, and once the little girl was settled with a pillow she stretched out on top of the covers and turned her back on me.

I stepped into the hallway and closed the door to a crack and Mira started to cry. Her tears came out in sharp grunting little packages that she buried deep in a pillow. I knew every spring in the mattress and they hummed out the choked rhythm of her misery. Her sounds reminded me of an animal caught in a trap, and it hurt me to hear them, and they whispered to me that I hadn't been to London in over ten years and that I hadn't heard to my brother's voice in two, and that I likely hadn't spared a single blessed thought for him on whatever day it was that he died. Her raw undressed grief stirred up old memories and I decided that I didn't want to think about them and went out back into the shaded heat, staring at my summer-withered garden. I thought about fixing myself something light. I thought about going back inside and drinking my glass of tea, chugging it down so hard and fast that it split my head with the ice. And then I thought bullshit, William. You are going to stay here and you are going to let yourself feel awful. You feel the hole but you don't feel it half as much as she does, even though the hole inside of you is older and goes deeper and hides more secrets. I stared at the dead vegetable vines and waited for the tears but I guess the heat was too brutal for them because though my eyes filled with grit and started to ache my stubborn flesh refused to part with a single goddamned one.

II.

A moon hung outside, huge and bloated and tinted amber, and the ground shimmered in trapped heat. Mira didn't want to see it. She stayed in the room she shared with Sarah, the air conditioning cranked up, and kept the shades drawn.

"He wrote a lot of letters about you," said Will. "I don't know if you're ready for them, or of you even want them, but…here you are."

He handed her a small box made of acacia wood. Mira took it and turned it over in her hands. The hinges had fallen off the lid and it was held tight to the box with a pair of strong postal elastics. She touched the places where the hinges had been.

"Thank you. You're right, I'm not ready for this now, but thank you just the same." She tucked a slice of hair behind her ear. "It's a thoughtful gesture. I appreciate it."

Will nodded. "Don't mention it."

"I'm sorry but I can't look at you," she said, and he noticed for the first time that she hadn't looked him in the eye since he'd knocked on her door. "Please go away and leave me alone."

III.

Mira hated everything about Australia: the color of the sky, the color of the ground, the pestilence of flies and the dust and how there was never any water except the sea and she hated the sea most of all, hated how vast and fetid it was, how it touched all the land in the world that she couldn't see. She hated the pounding thunderstorms and the cold indifference of the stars and she hated the sunsets set loose on the horizon like a tide of burning blood, hated them with every ounce of her own burning blood; no blood burned fiercer than Mira Sutler's in her first summer in Australia which she spent hating everything, screaming the fury of her hatred, slapping the face of the unchanging land with it.

IV.

There are pink birds here. I have never seen pink birds before and Sarah loves them; she runs out onto the gallery at dusk and when they squawk to each other she giggles and the giggling makes them fly away. They shift like a dawn-struck cloud over to the next roof and when she giggles again they scatter. There are moments when everything here is so breathtaking in its strangeness and so full of bursting beauty that it makes my heart crack open. I want to kill those moments. I want to kill them all and hold my split heart together with my hands because I can't bear it.

I can't stand the injustice of Sarah giggling without her father's breath in the world. My daughter sees the birds and laughs and in that moment I can't hate them; she has sanctified them with her smile, made them into something holy. I can't stand my pain and I can't stand the feeling of my feet touching the earth and I see the birds inside my head and think about the springtime dawn and I hate Adam for leaving me and then I can't hate the birds so I hate God for making them so beautiful and through this hatred I can love Adam in his absence the way I loved him in his presence and instead I hate God for making a goddamned memory out of the pink birds. I hate Will for being alive and the feeling comes over me so strong and so hard that I want to break something with it, anything at all, just to see it break and know that something else has been reduced to pieces even if it's only a plate or a cup or a dead branch and then my knuckles get tight and I think a wall of fire coming to take the house and the man inside it. I ask God to take the hate away from me but he won't. Then Will does something that makes Sarah giggle and because she is giggling I can't hate him anymore, and when Will does something that makes me think of Adam I can't hate him anymore and so I turn my hatred back on the birds, those fucking goddamned noisy pink birds. I feel the futility of hate and somehow that's worse; hating is warm, hating is vital, hating is the poisonous pulse inside of me that beats all the time no matter what, heeding only its own drive, the pulse that hates my flesh into love, and loves my blood into hate, and keeps me alive when I want to die and murders me when I want to live.

I don't miss my piano. I think of playing sometimes but the sensation of memory overwhelms me. My fingers would break the keys.

Coming here was not a good idea. But where else could we go?

V.

To William Sutler from Adam Sutler, dated 3 June 2035 (030614AR):

_Tonight I can't look at Mira without thinking about her money, and the transient nature of money. She's in bed asleep, and I'm in the next room so I can write this letter to you without waking her, and I'm sitting here chilled from being out of bed and wondering how I came into the love of a woman who doesn't know what it's like to be without nothing, whose parents loved her until they couldn't only because they were dead. I imagine they still love her from heaven, and she sleeps deep and never doubts that love; tonight I look at her bones beneath her skin and instead of her lovely figure I can only see all the meals she never missed. I feel I shall never understand her because she doesn't know hunger. More to the point I fear she will never understand me because I have never known the absence of hunger. Tonight I can't look at her without seeing her money and dwelling on its transient nature. It saddens me because I can see her flesh and her hair and even a flash of her sleeping spirit but I can't see her, and she is beautiful, and I love her very much._

I've thought about daddy tonight. Too much, I think.

I wake up in the night and I think I'm hollowed-out hungry but I'm not, and the pain of it is still there. It's like a ghost. I haven't been hollow for years but it's something you never forget.

Does the warm milk still work for you?

VI.

In the middle of the night she got dressed and came to my bed and stayed on top of the covers. She wept and kept to her side and didn't touch me and shook all over and she said it was a shooting death and sniffled until the air went mad with the sound. She said _I loved him so much_ and _I have to tell someone._ She said _I don't want to forget but I'm starting to_ and she said _do you ever hate God until you're blue in the teeth_ and _please I just want to hold an adult._

She put her arms around me and she settled her hot wet face into the curve of my neck and trembled like something small, something ripped screaming out of the world, and it made me want to hold her down. She asked _is it all right if I hate you_ and _is it all right if I kiss you_ and I looked up at the ceiling, she in her hot wallow of grief and feeling her body get soft on mine before she knew it was happening, thinking about whether or not I should hold her, wanting to and ashamed of my wanting; I wondered how it would feel to kiss my brother's wife and flushed in the wondering. She climbed over me, moved on top of me with her body all soft and loose, and murmured _I hate myself for wanting to hate you_ and _I hate myself for wanting to live_ and I touched her face and felt bad about it and the bad feeling made me hard. She kissed my mouth, faint and dry, and I said _you'll feel bad about this in the morning_. She traced a line worn into the skin of my cheek. She said _I know_ and she leaned forward to breathe on it and said _please kiss me I need it_ and _it's okay if you hate me_ and _we don't have to do anything more_. I touched her chin and turned it to kiss her and in her mouth I tasted all of her despair and the sweetness of her anguish.

Sarah's tired voice, floating down the hallway: "Mummy!"

Mira's tears fell warm on my face. Without a sound she got up and left.

VII.

"I can't get this to come out right." Mira looked into the frying pan. "Why can't I get this to come out right?"

"Did you recall the baking powder?"

"Shhh—" Mira wiped a hand across her mouth. "Shoot. No, I did not."

"That is why you have no leavening. It is due to the absence of leavening."

"What is that supposed to be, some kind of wordplay? The leavening isn't leavening today, but it may have been leavening yesterday, but most likely not because Mira is too thick to put it in the griddlecake recipe?"

Will chuckled.

Sarah ran into the kitchen and tugged on Mira's shorts. "Mummy." She pressed a plastic brick into her mother's palm. "Here."

"Thank you so much, darling." Mira put the brick alongside four others lined up on the counter. "Please go back into the lounge. Mum is trying to cook something and she is failing miserably."

Sarah turned around and ran out of the kitchen.

"And please don't run." She picked up the bowl and stirred the batter. "Can I put the baking powder in now?"

"You can try. It'll likely make little bitter lumps without doing much in the way of adding any lift." Will sat at the breakfast table and looked at the newspaper. "But I'm not going to get in your way, since you're learning."

"Well, shit." Mira dumped the batter down the sink. "I mean…shoot. Shoot, I really have to watch my mouth, I don't know why I'm swearing so much. I guess I'll start this over again. I apologize if you've gone faint with hunger. If you want to sneak a bit of fruit while I'm not looking I'll completely understand."

Will folded the newspaper. "Sarah?"

"What!"

"Would you like to share an orange?"

"Yes!"

Sarah ran back into the kitchen. She sat down on the floor and watched Will as he took an orange out of the basket on the table and loosened the peel. He leaned over and looked down at her. "Why are you sitting on the floor?"

"I'm a cat," she said.

"Really? I wasn't aware that cats could talk." He dropped the bits of peel onto the table. "Would you believe it, Mira? We have a talking cat in our kitchen. I wasn't aware that cats ate oranges, either. Or wore pink t-shirts. This is really a most extraordinary cat, you should turn around and have a look for yourself."

"Meow," said Sarah.

Mira laughed.

"You are a very nice kitty, but this is Sarah's orange." He pulled the fruit into sections. "I don't think it would be very nice of me to give Sarah's orange to a cat. Especially a strange pink-shirted cat that I've never seen before."

"Meow! Meow!"

"Well I suppose I could give you part of my share. What do you think about that?"

"Sarah, get up off the floor, please," said Mira.

"I think you should," said Will.

Sarah stood up and Will gave her a piece of the orange.

Mira measured flour into the bowl. "Now what do you say?"

Sarah grinned. "Thank you!"

"You're most welcome. Would you like to sit at the table?"

"No."

"All right, then. Suit yourself."

"Sarah, please sit at the table if you're going to eat. Where is the baking powder?"

"In the cabinet."

"No," said Sarah.

"Which cabinet?"

"The one with the spices."

Sarah reached up and Will gave her another piece. "Would you like a plate?"

Sarah bit into it. "No."

"I don't mean to pry," said Mira, opening the container of baking powder, "but how is it you aren't married?"

"I'm not married now, but that doesn't mean that I've never been." He swept the pieces of orange rind into his palm.

"What happened?"

He dropped them into the trash. "She left."

"I'm sorry if you don't want to talk about it."

He smiled and ate a piece of orange. "It was awhile ago. She's in South America somewhere now, I believe. I don't really know."

Mira wiped her hands on a rag. "Do you have any children?"

"No, not that I am aware of."

Mira grinned and rinsed off the whisk. "Not that you're aware of?"

"I can't account for every single…expenditure that I've made over the years, but no one has ever come forward."

Mira blushed and turned her attention to the bowl. "Oh. Well then. I see. You know, your neighbor didn't know that you have a brother. I spoke with her yesterday morning."

"Was it Lola or Deenie that you spoke with?"

Mira stirred up the new batch of batter. "Deenie."

"Oh. Nice enough woman, though I do wish her dog would stop defecating in my roses. I know it's good for growing things but I'm tired of stepping in it."

Mira laughed.

"It's not funny." He smiled a little. "I do wish she'd keep her crap to herself."

"You know, I've never apologized for…for that, well, you know, that night that…well, I'm sorry." Her face turned red. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking at all. It won't happen again."

He remained silent.

VIII.

The sky is sweet and pink, carved out like the inside of a melon and I smell the lingering water of an unforeseen rainstorm trapped beneath the rocks in the garden, lining the driveway, dreaming in the street. I've spent a long time on this gallery, in this chair, looking at nothing. When you look at nothing long enough nothing gets restless and a slow reveal opens until you are pinned, helpless, and able to see everything: the shade of blue on the house across the street, the yellow flowers grown in pots, a fly buzzing in an ascending spiral, the glint of a pull-tab dangling from an under-watered shrub, a peanut shell balanced on the curb, the stars waiting to strut out into the sky and the cracks in the blue paint and the spider webs curled up under the eaves. My breath goes out from me, bathed in the tenderness, belonging to everything that doesn't have a name.

"I wasn't going to pursue the conversation this morning." Will takes the chair next to mine and the rattan creaks beneath him, disturbing the weight and warmth of his regard. "Not around little ears, but I'm willing to pursue it now."

"You don't have to." My wrists loosen and turn in on themselves. "You have my full permission to let it go."

"I don't want your permission. What I want is to have a conversation with you."

"All right, then."

"In many ways you knew Adam better than I did."

I look closer at the spider webs clinging to the eaves and when I look into them I hope I'll see a spider. I wish for the confetti remains of something, a winged insect snarled in silk and I believe seeing it will make me feel something that I want to feel. I want a glimpse that will lead my mind down all the different threads inside of me and pull on them so I know where they are. I feel them start to hum.

"I appreciate you bringing Sarah to me. I appreciate knowing her. She's something else."

"Yes." I feel the tears awaken and caress his words, looking for a reason to climb out. "She is."

"I wonder how much of her is you and how much of her is Adam, and when I get to the bottom of it I see that she's just herself, no more and no less. What a miracle that is."

I wipe the little smile off my face with the side of my wrist and I sniff even though my eyes are still dry. "I don't understand what this has to do with me getting into your bed."

"Things are what they are," he says. "I can't pull myself out even if I want to, because this is a family matter."

I nod and my hair falls all in my face and I just leave it there.

"I don't want to. I'll let a lot of things go."

"It's hard, you know," I say. "But you know that, I can't imagine what this is like for you, and I mean that; I literally can't imagine it. I never had a brother or a sister, but I know how it is to be alone. Why did you come here, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I followed a girl." He shrugs. "I never caught up with the girl but I caught up with a decent life for myself."

"I see." There is a sudden rush of scent, not just water but hidden petals and blossoms brazen in their bloom and thousands of murmuring leaves and pool chlorine and the mingling of rain with the dust, and it flows inside of me, in my nose and then throughout my limbs, swelling in my fingers and my toes. A deep breath increases it tenfold. I let it out and it makes me dizzy; my head lightens with the rich scent of a winter evening, full of strangeness, and it takes me out of myself.

"We kept in touch through the post," he says. "Antiquated as it was, I understand it was the most private way to do things."

"Oh, yes." I move my hair and glance at him. "The government was far too lazy to open envelopes and read them and then close them up again. A fair bit of the revolution happened through the post. Strange. It's so strange to think about it like that. I can't even imagine what it's like now, or what England will become. Like it is here, I suppose. Or maybe it will be something entirely different."

"You miss it, don't you?"

"Oh my goodness, yes, I miss it every day. Every moment is a moment that reminds me of how far away from home I've become, and there is nothing here that is like England. Nothing at all. I search for it and sometimes it's a mad scramble but no matter how I struggle I come up with double handfuls of nothing. I hit up against that wall and I hate it."

"Yes, which is why I love it, I suppose. Oh Australia's hot and bitchy, but you've got to respect that, and I do." He chuckles. "I respect it right up one side and down the other, and through the middle come to think of it. I'd say it's the only way to live here, but that's the only way to live anywhere, really."

"I never traveled anywhere," I say. "I never went anywhere before I had to."

"I think that's the way of things."

I look at him. "I feel I should apologize."

"You have nothing to apologize for. You belong to your grief, and you will until it decides to let you go. You will do a lot of things that you won't remember with any sort of fondness. Would you mind if I took your hand?"

"Oh. No." I reach across the space between the chairs. "Not at all."

His hand is long and firm and the skin of its back leathery and freckled and the hidden topography does not feel like Adam; the lie of the bones articulate in the pattern of a different road and the strength in his fingers divides into notes that have fashioned themselves into many different songs. I know that he was a miner once, and a landscaper, and a drunk, and that he sold jewelry and cleaned toilets and was a teacher of English before retiring, but even if I didn't know all of those things I would hear something of them in the grip of his hand, tendons and nail beds and sharp veins. It is worn and tired and broken in places and still strong.

"Have I thanked you?" The snot arrives ahead of the tears. "Have I said _thank you_ enough for this?"

"Of course you have."

"Thank you for everything you've done." I wipe my eyes with my free hand. "Words are so inadequate."

He takes my hand between both of his own and I watch him succumb to the failing light and I see that he is taller, and lighter-haired, and beneath the magnificent ruin of his face are the same stalwart bones shaped as if left out in the rain and the wind a little longer before being snapped into place; his smile pulls up more on one side and all of his laughter is worn into paths on his cheeks, deeper on the one side, skewed into a touch of rakishness. I wonder if there was once a dimple in there, and if it held the pool of his considerable charm, and I imagine him as a young man digging opals out of the ground; under the arroyos and unloved places I see how different his face might've been and that maybe in deepest youth he and his brother had looked more alike, or that the differences between them were more about temperament and less about the nose that came from mother, the shape of the teeth behind a fuller mouth, or the jaw line that came from father. Though passing years have worn both faces into the same pattern, it is not really the same pattern, only the tendency of flesh to revert back to its own deepest wisdom and wear the sum of a life. Looking at his face makes me want to smile, and I feel the simplicity of it always being so. I feel myself smiling and the warmth rising into my forehead and I look away. He squeezes my hand.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"Yes, please. That sounds lovely."


	10. Letters, September 2036.

091616AR (16 September 2036)

_Dear Lewis,_

It's foolish of me to bother writing this, but I'm the sort who says full steam ahead even if it's going to hurt and especially if it's going to be a waste of time.

I thought about you today, between lunch with Rowan and the back-to-back lessons with all of those Ramsey children (and a miracle it is, really, to have so much musical talent crammed into one family--though I really wish they weren't so frightfully close in age). One of the Ramsey boys wanted to see the Stradivarius. While all of this is true, it also isn't true. I simply thought of you for no reason at all, because I could, and it was nice.

How are you? I don't see you much any more. The last time I thought to was at the BTN fundraiser, a function I attended with the express hope of seeing you and asking you how you are face-to-face, but you weren't there. I see you on television, of course, but that doesn't tell me anything more than seeing me on television tells anybody. Between the primping, and the dressing, and the rehearsing, and the scripts, there is so little of me left. It's all image. I see your image, but it doesn't tell me much.

I want to know how you are. Are you alone? Are you eating your supper while you read this? Are you in your car, in the parking lot, using the last of the light (or even the first of it)? I suppose I have too much imagination for my own good. I can imagine all of these things and I can imagine a dozen more, but none of these images are in any way satisfying.

I shouldn't ask these questions of you, but I suppose it doesn't much matter. Do you ever think about the gala? I couldn't blame you really if you didn't. I don't always want to think about it. It'll come out of something else, a blue skirt one of my students wears to school or there'll be a smell somewhere that makes me think of it, a perfume someone is wearing or the smell of champagne on someone's breath. I apologize. I shouldn't bring these things up. Please forget I mentioned it.

I am well, though life is certainly harder than I thought it would be. I miss the ability to go where I want to go without a security detail following me everywhere. I don't know if I had one before as I have never asked. I was better off not knowing, if I did indeed have one. These days I'm very self-conscious of being away from the house. It's better at work, though I see the strain of it in Rowan. Some days I feel like he wants to sack me but is afraid to. Other days, I imagine, he sees me as some sort of boon. I don't really know. He and I don't talk about these things.

When you speak to Leo again, please tell him that I wish him all the luck on him down there in Sydney, that he played like an angel all the times he played for me (even when he wasn't playing so well), and that I hope he returns home someday. I'd love to see him again.

Take care of yourself. I think about you often.

Love,

Mira

  


091816AR (18 September 2036)

_Dear Mira,_

You look awful most times I turn on the television. I'll tell you right now that you're paying your makeup &amp; lighting folks far too much money. It's always the same, that plastic face looking back at me. Too much shine. Not to say that you aren't still a lovely woman, because you are. Every visible inch. You're just a poorly lit one.

It is nice to hear from you and I'm happy that you are doing well. I do think of you and I do it often. It's difficult to avoid, actually, what with your newfound visibility. I don't think I could stop doing it if I wanted to. There are too many visual reminders. Most of the time I'm perfectly fine with that. I do enjoy thinking about you at the gala. I recall it often, and fondly, and I linger over it when I am alone.

If it pleases you to imagine me reading your letter, then I'll tell you this: I did read it in my car, and it was in the morning, this morning, the morning of the 18th, if you care to remember it, how it was sunny even though the mist still clung to everything. I read it again in the office, and I carried it around all day in my wallet so I wouldn't misplace it anywhere (and how these people are an awful nosy bunch of cunts). I carried it around until I had time to reread it and begin this letter. I wanted to be sure to answer all of your questions. I'm writing this at home. The radio is on, and it's playing a terrible tune from the American 1990s. Does this please you, love, or do you need more detail?

I'm well, and very busy. There have been problems on the technical end of things and Roger continues to hire and then fire my writers, which is a constant bitch. The inanity of it is that it's the same pair of writers. I do wish he'd figure it out. I think it could all be settled rather nicely with a good pissing contest, myself. But what does it matter? Not a fucking thing.

I spoke with Angela last week and Leo is getting on very well. He's settled in and making good marks. I imagine he'll be home for the Christmas holiday, if you'd like to see him then.

I know some good makeup &amp; lighting folks if you'd like to have their names.

Please remain well.

Lewis

  


92016AR (20 September 2036)

_Dear Lewis,_

Thank you so much for answering my letter. I'm glad to know that you are well. Thank you for the offer re: makeup &amp; lighting, as well. I would love to have those names.

I am writing this at the dining room table wearing a peach-colored bathrobe and it's dark outside because it's late. A. is asleep. I cannot sleep. I've tried but I just lay there and stare at the ceiling. It's remarkably quiet in this house. I always feel like I should be able to hear the traffic noise, but I never can. Unless of course I open the windows.

I have a glass of milk that I'm not drinking. It's just sitting here, getting warm. I should be trying to sleep since I have to teach class in the morning. I don't know why all the introductory theory classes have been scheduled in the mornings. Used to be that I could schedule my lessons in the morning and teach theories in the afternoon, after lunch. I think it would be a better time for it, since the students have eaten. I thought of mentioning it to Rowan but I don't want to come off as a total strop.

I watched your show this evening. I don't usually (as it is my habit to grade papers at this time or perhaps eat with A., if he's home) but I wanted to judge the quality of your writers for myself. I admit that I always thought you wrote it, or at least contributed, but on a close view it was more apparent to me that was all scripted. I know how the scripted word feels in my mouth and I can now imagine how it feels in yours. For what it's worth, I think the writers are adequate. I'm far more qualified to pass judgment on the soundtrack work. Grade: A-.

I've looked at the clock. It's 12:34 a.m. When I was a girl there was a wishing game we played around this time because it was in chronological order the numbers were in proper order and there was some kind of magic in it. Or so we believed. As a girl, I wished for foolish things. As an adult, I'm only wishing for sleep. A few of the wishes came true, so I suppose I shouldn't discount the magic utterly. I wonder if I'm dreaming all of this: sitting here, my toes cold on the floor because they're bare, drinking milk out of a sweating glass.

I love detail. I adore it. I want to know as much as you'll tell me. Tell me about the light that is falling in across your paper and the things you are smelling. I want to know the name of the song on the radio this time. I'm not listening to anything, but I hear the Moonlight Sonata playing in my head. I always hear something, or the bits and pieces of something. Leo was wonderful the night of the gala. I was thinking about that today, how marvelous he was. It was an auspicious debut. I'm not surprised Australia accepted him at 17. Now that I'm thinking of it, I'm hearing it the way he played it. I remember all the nuances and they are making me smile.

I must finish this milk and try to sleep. After you get this letter, the next time it's 12:34, make a wish for me. Who knows. Maybe it'll help.

Love,

Mira

92316AR (23 September 2036)

_Dear Mira,_

I thought of you this noon. I hope that's enough. If it isn't, I'd suggest some Zolpidem. Works like a charm. Though I suppose there is something to be said for the gesture of a thought.

It is evening, and I am writing this in my office. The lighting is atrocious. It's too bright for letter-writing &amp; a letter like this should be written in sunlight, or the lamplight of a bedroom. Unfortunately for me I still have too much work to do. I'd rather be writing this at home. I'd rather be at home, full stop. In the background is a video clip that I should be watching but instead I'm half-listening to it and to the sound of my pen on the paper.

There's coffee here and a pep-pill that I'm trying to make a decision about. If I take it, I'll be up all night. That has its good sides and its bad ones. I took the damned tie off but I'm still wearing the jacket. The phone is ringing and I'm ignoring it because I am sick to death of Roger's fuckwittery.

I can't blame you for preferring papers to this drivel. Sometimes I wonder why I eat so much shit and regurgitate it for a studio audience. I suppose once upon a time all of this had a point. It still does, I've just lost any proper grip on it. It's management, and Lord knows that management is necessary. It is essential, thinking on it. We must donate our blood to the propaganda machine. Bleed, my darlings. Yes. I'll put a stop to this right now. I won't write any more on it. I suppose this counts as thought-crime. I further suppose that it makes me a crazy person to be writing this on a piece of paper that will find its way into your house. Since I've really tied it on, I'll go all the way with it: I'm thinking about you, and I'm doing it right now, and in my mind there are no dining tables or peach-colored robes to get in my way. I'm thinking of you, Mira. Just you.

Being a glutton for details, I'm going to serve you well, love. While there are many things that could occupy myself with when I am in fact thinking of you, at this moment it is only the sight of the fine hairs on the back of your neck that I am thinking of. I'm seeing the way they look when they're tamed with sweat. Think on that the next time your milk glass sweats into your hand. Think of me thinking of the sweat I once made on the back of your neck.

You may do whatever you wish with this letter. I will not hold it against you. I apologize if I have offended your sensibilities, though it is my feeling hunch that I probably have not. You're a fucking troublemaker.

I'm blaming this gush of baldfaced honesty on the late hour. You may join me in that, if you wish. Goodnight.

Lewis

92716AR (27 September 2036)

_Dear Lewis,_

I'm in my office and eating the most delicious chicken sandwich. It's full of meat sliced into strips so narrow that they are crumbling, and there is just the barest scrape of butter on the bread with a little bit of garlic. The bread is rustic and homemade. I'm not sure why I'm in detail over my lunch, except that perhaps because I am having a late lunch today and I am starving. A. made the bread two days ago. The crust on it is perfect. A. loves to cook and he is very good at it. That's not something many people know, I guess.

I'll further describe my office to you, so that you may better imagine me in it: the carpets are burgundy-colored and its walls are a color like cream but with more brown in it. My desk is the desk used by my predecessor, dark wood that is full of dents. I have photographs of flowers on my walls. This place is a mess and I need to straighten it up. I have papers everywhere. This really isn't like me. The flowers on the walls are roses, daffodils, and hyacinths and all of them were taken in the gardens of my family's home. There's a potted plant that is always on the verge of dying because there is no window. The lamp light is supposed to be enough for it, but it just straggles on.

I have your last letter in my car. I never brought it into the house. I'll keep it in there unless it needs to be thrown away. If that happens I'll burn it.

I think you should try to sleep. Those pills aren't a good idea. I've only taken them once, while my mother was dying. I didn't want her to pass away while I was sleeping. The morning she died I had been awake for 60 hours. It was hard to think. Things would go fast and then slow and then fast again, and my heart kept racing, like I was excited for something. It was the last time and the first time I took them and I don't think I would want to do it again.

I would like to see you, but it is probably not a good idea.

I miss going to the underground places. You're the only person I know who knows about that. I miss going there and listening those pirated copies of all the old forbidden music. When I was a girl there was a girl in my class who had copies of Madonna songs (an American pop artist from the 80s and the 90s, in case you aren't familiar). She got them from her Australian cousin who was visiting and had managed to get them into the country. The files were corrupted, but we could still hear parts of them. I remember how it felt to hear those lyrics singing about things so frankly. I can't remember the names of the songs now. Most of them were about sex. Do you still go? Would you tell me what they're like now?

I'm done eating, but I still have some juice left to drink. I kind of wish it was wine.

Love,

Mira

P.S. - You may imagine me any way you want to. I rather like the thought of that.

92916AR (29 September 2036)

_Dear Mira,_

I'm sure that you do. I'm aware of your diligent efforts to provoke me and I'll have you know that they're working. Is this license to imagine, or is it leave to write about it? I'd put money on the latter. I intend to do so.

You brought up the underground places and so I will begin there. I have been a few times in the lat six months, and they are much as you remember them. It is my belief that there are about 20, drifting around mostly beneath the city but a few are in old buildings, near the quarantine line. It's never the same building twice. There is a shifting character about them; the ones that are functioning now draw their character from whomever patronizes them (much as it has always been). The place where I saw you is in a different location now, and its flavor is more like that of a cheap pub. The dancers and performers have all shifted away to another place. There were folks of course who knew your face and I imagine this mad them afraid. There is also the transient nature of things. The last time I went into one of those places it was during the summer, in the early part, sometime this June. I got very drunk and went off with this youngish girl (she was perhaps courting her middle twenties) and did---I don't know what. I don't recall. I believe there was a sloppy blowjob involved but truth be told that is not a very distinct designation in this memory of mine. It wasn't the first time.

I do like to imagine you back in those days when you still had all of your anonymity. Not to say that you couldn't still fly by night---there are many folks that do, and more of them in positions of esteem than you might thing. I can think of two such examples off the top of my head and both of them with, shall we say, unconventional tastes (of the variety that would get them both arrested). I don't want to talk about them, I want to talk about you. In speaking of you it's easier to think of you, and to see you in your undressed mood as you where the night I saw you dancing down there. I'll skip right over the beautiful bits and the flowery figurative language and tell you that watching you brought me into that moment and made it real. There is a lot of codswallop in daily life and you, my dear, rose above that. I wonder if that's what you were doing there in the first place.

This letter I am able to compose at home. It is very early in the morning, that hour just before the false dawn heralds the true one. I am still in bed. It's warm here, and the rest of the room is cold. It is my plan to mail this on the way to work. I'm wondering if you're awake. With that comes an image of you awake in your old bed, the one at your house. In this image you are naked because it's the only way I want to see you when you are in bed. I can't remember how you look when you are alone on your back. I fill in the details: blankets to the waist, because I want to see your breasts, hair loose, because I want to see how knotted it is with sleep that I imagine was restless for you because you have mentioned it to me. I don't know if you're thinking or not. I'm not imagining you with your hands on yourself, because I prefer to look at this scene and imagine my absence from it. I want to want you, and in this image it is easy to do that. I prefer you in discriminating light. It outlines all of the places I want to kiss.

I need to stop writing. I need to get out of bed. I need to get ready for the rest of my day. I want to see you. I want to hear your voice. I need to get out of bed. I need to put this pen down. I need to wank. I would write about it but I think it's too much. Fuck it. Oh fuck it all to hell. I'm going to put this aside now. I cannot think.

Lewis

P.S. - You are going to get me killed.


	11. Notes

I.

At first she did it in secret: a note would come out of somewhere, peek between the lost territories, and announce itself. Mira wrote them down because when she didn't they jostled together and hurt themselves and cried out for solace and her mother's heart couldn't deny them. She left them as they came, pieces written on take-away napkins and receipts and crumpled candy wrappers made smooth to receive a single note, a landing that touched down soft. Tender and tiny, one at a time she felt guilty about keeping them, ashamed of their sentient life. Once she'd filled a shoebox with notes Mira took them out and dumped them onto the bed and listened to the way they murmured together, the introductions happening among them. Mira looked at them by the light of a lamp, a warm light, and a buzz rose from the crumpled pieces of forgotten trash.

She bought paper and drew the lines on it herself with ink and listened to the notes and used a pencil because she wasn't sure when they would want to rearrange themselves like disgruntled relatives at a holiday table or diplomats at a state dinner; proximity was the key to getting anything done and opening the channels that lie embedded between people and between notes. The lead was soft and that was okay. The notes needed soft. Mira poured forth her precision into the inked lines and opened herself with the pencil. She drew a doorway and gifted it with magic.

There were middle-eastern drums and stringed instruments at the music store that looked foreign but felt at home in her hands and to her slumbering mind, awakened by the sharp fingering of tight strings. Mira bought them and looked at their shapes and put them on the wall and let the lacquer and the unnatural shapes of the woods speak to her. They whispered of tangy emotion and the new fresh tender blades of unformed words, and Mira looked on them and felt fear unroll on her heart like the reaction of a god, a voice drawn in thunder. For the first time the fear was sweet. The guilt came edged in honey and she could not resist it.

She put the notes in order and left them to themselves and in the morning she would come back to them before anyone else was awake because they were harder to hear over the voices of her loved ones, they were impossible to understand when the world filled itself slowly with the stirring presence of her child and the imperative of motherhood, sometimes dark and sometimes clothed in roses and sometimes the very taste of despair; Mira woke in the darkness before the dawn and in the evolving light of dawn she listened to her notes and moved them when they wanted to be moved and married them when they professed undying love for each other and found harmonious spaces for the fruits of that love. She wrote the notes down in the morning and did not think about the instruments hanging on her wall or the musicians she would need to hear all of these notes together; Mira thought only about the families growing on her pages, and their arias of grief and hope for love that is secret and made out of earth, and she thought about the perfection inside a stone and the majesty of its stillness and the dance it does with rain and water, wind and sun, and how the best things nurture themselves on the inside until they explode in love and desire and the long false slumber of the sheltering heart.

II.

I am still angry. I want to breathe all the air left in the world so that no one else will ever have to breathe it for me. My anger fills me instead and sometimes I'm so scared that I'm scream myself into the grave. Then it breaks. It breaks.

III.

"I wasn't aware you composed," he said.

"Oh, I don't. At least not often. Have you been looking at my papers?"

"No, not the papers." He braced his hands on the doorway. "I saw your notebook and it was on the floor with the pages open. At first I didn't know what all of those little marks meant and then my mind figured it out."

"I haven't composed since I was a girl and it was for a class I was taking." Mira looked at her pages and rearranged them and in that gesture felt every inch the mad, flushed Mozart. "I never felt it was my strong point and now I cannot stop. All day, every day. I find notes waiting for me in the strangest places."

"Are you going to record it?"

She gathered them up. "I don't know."

"What is its name?"

She looked up at him. "I don't know that either."

He judged the tone of her face. "Everything has a name."

"Yes, I agree. I just don't know it yet."

"I wanted to tell you that you make delicious pancakes," he said. "And that they are now gone because I ate them, and that Sarah has found a spider to play with."

"I trust it's harmless," she said.

"Yes," said Will. "And she loves it."

"Does it have a name?"

"Princess Fairyland," said Will.

"Princess Fairyland the spider."

He shrugged. "She likes to let it crawl up and down her arms."

"Her," said Mira, and she smiled a little.

"Yes, so sorry. Her. Thank you for that correction and no doubt hers would've been much harsher."

"I think so."

"I'm also going in town if you'd like to come along."

"No, thanks. Though if Sarah wants to go with you that would be fine. If she does not then tell her to let Princess Fairyland go and to come inside."

"Is she allowed ice cream?"

"Yes," said Mira. "But nothing over a small. I don't want to ruin her appetite."

IV.

To William Sutler from Adam Sutler dated 7 November 2036 (071115AR):

_I know that I am a bad man. I know that I've done bad things. Likely what you have heard come out of England is the truth and maybe then some; I've forgotten all that has been done in the name of making things how they are. I know that all of this will end badly._

Why, then, do I persist?

I don't know. The atrocity has tapered off as everything must, and not it is about the machinations of maintenance. People don't look behind the walls of everyday reality and I can see why they don't. What goes on back there is not for everyday people to see. It's like Christmas after a fashion, in the old fashion: people as children see the lights and the candies and the parties but they don't feel the pinch in the wallet or the loss of sleep or the hours put into choosing just the right candles for the centerpiece or in the construction of a figgy pudding.

I have gone out of my mind, William.

Unity is simplicity. It is the one. But can there ever be a one? The one is too fractured. I want to hate but I cannot even do that. There are those below me whose job is to hate and I allow them to do the hating for me. I would hate, Will, but I only see numbers. I cannot connect to the human machine. I am mad and dance with the keys to the kingdom. I am mad with well-spent love for you and misdirected love of my dead parents who did not love either of us but only saw us as mouths, machines that needed feeding. I still love you when I cannot love anything outside of myself, but then I don't love myself either. My work in life is to make the figgy pudding in the disordered dark. Don't ever go back there.

I know this won't end well for me. Please know that a bad man may love his brother and that he may love his wife, and that he may fear for them above fear for himself. Someone has to know. It should be you.

Going into the dark isn't worth it. It's never worth it.

V.

Mira takes the drum down off its place on the wall and when she hands it to Sarah I see the colors of the strange wood and how big the drum is, how Sarah has to work to manage it, but Mira steps back and lets her daughter put her small hands all over what is undoubtedly an expensive thing and says, "Okay, darling, you play and Mummy will dance." Sarah giggles and taps the tight skin of the drum and I feel it in my skin. "Like Mummy showed you," says Mira, adjusting the homely scarf tied around the hips of her jeans. "Do you remember how Mummy showed you?"

Sarah nods and splays her fingers on the skin of the drum and she says with a barely contained exuberance, "Yes!" Mira makes her body ready for the dance. Sarah giggles again and she laughs and the exuberance isn't exuberant at all, it's something that pushes at her seams and demands time and it is wrong that so much should be contained in such a tiny smoldering vessel. Sarah watches her mom and smiles with her teeth, showing all full of lightnings and Mira says "Okay, Sweet Pea, Mummy is ready for you."

The most amazing thing happens. Sarah's fingers tap the surface of the drum and it's like a heart searching for its beat. Mira falls into it with her hips, picks the beats up like bowls and whirls with them held like an offering and then this child who is no longer a child has found the proper rhythm out of herself, the ebullience and wild volts of laughter tamed by the fluid pace of her fingers. Watching Sarah is so mesmerizing that I don't see Mira, and then I see all of her at once; the way she flies out of her body and becomes everything in the room, her heart going into the chairs and the floorboards and the curtains pouring love down on the lampshades and the galoshes in the corner, leaving nothing out; all of her is in love with everything, dances its way into time. Sarah laughs and is full of cutting force and dipped in sugar, and she watches the hips of her mother and plays a little faster, saying "Yay mum, yay mum, yay mum" over and over again, stripped down to remedial delight. Her little hands are full of voodoo. She is a witch of music and her mother is a dervish, and all the love in the room crowds in on me, rushes against my lungs.

Mira finishes her dance. Sarah claps, transported with joy. Sarah is shining and Mira is so warm and when she sits down and balances the drum in her lap I feel an old ancient dread trapped inside my motionless thighs, a black forbearance in my heart. She takes up the drum and I feel all the terrible things awaiting at the gates of improbability and breathing hard against impossibility and her hand on the drum, her palm caressing the skin, the poise in her neck and her full regard for her little one; all of these things crack the atmosphere, filling it with a smell of birth.

Mira plays the drum with expertise and Sarah twirls around and around. Her hips don't have all their parts yet and they are unconcerned to rock awkwardly to the presence of such precise beats, such relentless invitation. Her feet know the patterns and she likes to twirl and twirl and twirl some more like a flower that wants to bloom and doesn't know how. Sarah laughs like rain and I taste it on my tongue and it fills me with thirst and stone-colored roots that hold me fast to this place, the soft yielding mud and the warmth of a mother's love.

She says "you, Will, you," and it sounds like _you will you will_, and I try to hold up my hands but I cannot even do that, I want to say no but my lips are sealed with honey and my knees pick up Mira's incessant rhythm. The stubborn heart that won't die and won't cry and won't dance, that can't dance, rises up out of me and slips beyond my reach. "Now you, Will, now you," she says, _now you will now you will_, the words leave me no choice and if I want myself back I'll have to dance after it. I'll have to climb the rope down into the quivering place, stamp it with my feet and loosen it up with my hips until it can be chewed, swallowed, placated. I dance in the middle of my lounge room while the shadows laugh and the plants outside hush and Mira watches me from the eye of her cyclone, blessing me with her knowing, with her secret place.

I wish he could see this. I wish he was alive, and in that wishing all of my life comes true.

VI.

I am a mammal that can smell pain. I want to say _are you hurting? Do you need me?_ There is always need in shadow even when the shadows are on the ceiling and science can explain them away. Reality is made all the more shaky in the dark pitiless rooms of the heart. So I go into his room. _Do you need me?_

He turns over and I see that one arm is hidden beneath the sheet and that his breath is all tangled up in the fabric, this smell of soap and of pain, and I can't see the look on his face but I see the answers composed in the turning of his body beneath the sheet, the moonlight that wants to shine in through the windows but cannot because the moon is hiding her face. I wish that I could hide mine. I am hot and cold and wet on the surface and dry on the inside. He turns all the way over and he is caught.

I put my hand on the doorway and I feel the touch of his eyes on the inside of my wrist and a silent desire that communicates through the paint, an entreaty upon the tips of my fingers. He seems trapped in sleep but not awake or half-engaged in the beginnings of a dream and I want to go to the bed but I touch the painted door. I make a tent of my fingers. His breath settles across the threshold and into my breath and with the exhale my feet move.

_Do you need me?_ I ask and he says _I don't know what you mean_. I say _I don't know either, though I know Adam would've said 'yes, you do' and he would've been right_. His arms crawl over the covers. _Would he have been?_ he asks, and I say _maybe not this time_. My ribs pull apart and my breasts settle over my belly, in and out, marking the rhythm of the night. Its secret ecstasy fills me with half-formed sleep and idle dreams waiting for their time upon the stage. I feel him, his sleep steeped in wakefulness and formless desire. I want him to look at my hands. I want his imagination on them, I want his thoughts inside the clothes that I am wearing. _I thought you needed me_, I say.

_Come here_. I climb onto the bed and the heat trapped in it is loosed upon my skin. He puts an arm around me and I settle into it. I settle _for_ it, close my eyes and step into the full darkness. I feel his hand on my arm and the other hand on my belly, and I stay in the dark while I breathe and keep his scent close. He pulls up my shirt enough to feel skin. One living bit of acreage to another, the sinuousness of skin, until I can't find the place between his palm and my navel until it is underscored by breath that is not my own, harshness that is not my own. He put his hand in my knickers and as he touches my cunt and splits it open to a puddle of moisture, finds it slippery, he keeps on breathing over his teeth. The inside of me gets warm and starts to tremble with a modest motion. I keep my eyes shut against the rising crimes and he touches them until they climb up inside of me. A snap of breath and his fingers measure the tight hard pulse of my clit, the flutter of my lips. I care so little as to half-fill my chalice and then spill it and while it feels good it feels bad and I am hollowed out. He holds me when I'm done and I feel his wet fingers on me and the disgruntled muscles still sweetening inside my thighs, wondering where all the money has gone. I hold him tight, tight, tight in my arms and in my neck, womb pulling up inside, a long orgasm breaking in a dawn made slow by the cold. In his body comes the outrage buried in his skin along with heat and weariness. I kiss him, feeling the ponderous earth. _A cupful of honey_, I say, because a cup is all I have. _All right_, he whispers. I put a kiss on his hard flat belly and take his cock in my hand because the reversal of time makes it hard.

I sleep sodden in fear. I sleep caught in a web of rain.

VII.

Mira woke from a dream. It was afternoon and she could hear the flies and smell something sweet that had been left out to rot on the sidewalk. Inside this dream was a perfect ululation of grief that had its roots entangled deep in her roots, and her roots felt swollen in the heat and oozed some sweet slickness, a yearning that was not ready for sunlight, and as she woke and felt tight in the deepest part of her womb, the ululation coiled back around on itself and succumbed to the underground.

She sat up and grabbed her notebook and puzzled out each inflection, each time it broke into a new place and got rich or got lean or glided through on a cloak of perfect neutrality; it was a sound with a thousand parts, a thousand beating hearts and agonized breaths and little fervid stones buried deep down in the truth, and as she wrote through the breaking mist she imagined a good strong professional singer, a contralto perhaps, a woman who would be able to mold her pipes around each nuance and push it through to where it needed to go. A trained tongue full of skill nestled within the brave cave of someone's mouth. She transcribed it into notes and put them together in a puzzle that rose and fell like a bridge caught in a quake and she thought about finding that classically trained voice, someone who could handle the of grief and yearning and origins and the leash of flesh, the body as prison and savior, and for the first time she saw the song as a whole, this song of songs, and her womb bloomed into pomegranates and shattered stone and the mud inside her flesh, first wrought by the hand of God.

VIII.

Sarah turned four years old.

When she had gone off to bed Mira went outside and looked up at the big bright orange moon hanging over the rooftops and wept. The flies came out of the darkness, beckoned by the scent of her tears.


	12. Letters, March 2037.

_040317AR (3 March 2037)  
1:11 a.m._

Dear Mira,

I am full of wanting to understand you. My mind aches with it. I suppose other things ache too, but it is my thought that I want to focus on tonight. It is cold here and I am imagining the cold on your skin. Please tell me that you'll read this letter outside, somewhere, in the cold. I can see the shape of your breath on the air. I wish I could feel its heat in the palms of my hands.

Dear, dear Mira. I give you what you want because I am helpless not to. You take advantage of me and I imagine this too because I cannot help thinking of you, imagining you; I am struggling to recall the taste of your skin, the flavor of your own peculiar salts steeped in the chemicals of your body. I wonder at the taste of you in sleep, in fear, in indifference, after you've had a few too many cocktails, when you haven't washed, mixed with the remnants of broken-down perfume. You can't tell me these things. They must be experienced. I wish you could distill the flavor of your mouth following a fresh orgasm stolen in the toilets of the Conservatory and send it to me. I would taste it very slowly. I would make such a thing last. It would be worth more than diamonds, I think.

I want you to tell me about your feet. Tonight is the first night that I have thought about your feet in such detail. I want to know how many kilometers they have walked and how their small hard bones would feel pressed against my lips; I want to know the texture of the skin that stretches out on top of them. Tell me about the embrace of the flesh that lies close to the bones in your feet. Don't leave out all of the roughened spots, those places chipped and careworn by your shoes. Please put lotion on them tonight and rub the places where the bones meet beneath the skin. They are tired. You must love them. Know that I am thinking in this precise moment of all the places on your body that you think are ugly and I am wishing to see them. If you can't stand to look at it, I want to touch it. Please touch all of them with gentleness. Do it tonight. Do it now if you can.

I want to know how you're feeling. Tell me how your soul occupies your flesh. Make a meal of your happiness and feed it to me one word at a time. Lick the boredom off your fingers and rub them in the margins of the paper. If you're sad I want to know the shapes of your tears. I want to know how the room you're in mocks you , or soothes you, or excites you. Hungry, hungry. I'm so hungry for news of you that it fills me with shame. I'm hungry for understanding. Spell yourself out to me. You must know by now that I will deny you nothing. I'll drink in every single word you choose to bleed for me. I'll imagine your murder of me, if that is what you want. I'll imagine the freckles on your chest and your loneliness and your anger with me for wanting you.

Fuck, Mira. I don't know why I keep doing this when it goddamned hurts.

Tell me something I don't know about you. Give me a reason to imagine you bent over my desk with your skirt up over your head. I love you so much.

Lewis

040517AR (5 March 2037)  
8:05 p.m.

Dear Lewis,

I want to see you. Will you see me?

Come to the house. There are no cameras here.

M.

She finished the note and mailed it before she could change her mind, heart knocking at the back of her teeth

_(and later that week it)_

Is a dismal night, full of heavy clouds and drizzle. He leaves his wet coat and scarf in the entryway.

Mira opens the door. It is dark in the house too, a stain of light drifting from the back rooms, tinting all the shadows with gold. She's wearing a loose plum-colored sweater with a big cowl neck that hangs off one bare shoulder and grey yoga pants. Her hair is down. She looks at him and steps aside without a word. He walks into the living room, where there are no lights on. She closes the door.

"Hello," she says. "How are you?"

"I'm well. You?"

She nods. "The same." Her eyes lift to his. "Would you like a glass of wine?"

"No." He shakes his head. "No, thank you."

"A-All right." She puts a hand on his chest. "What shall we do?"

He covers her hand with this. "May I…may I kiss your feet?"

The blood rises up and blooms in her cheeks. "I…yes."

He leans over her to turn on a table lamp. The cone of light reveals an overstuffed velvet couch that doesn't quite match the shade in her sweater. "I can't believe you're doing this." She unbuttons his shirt. "I can't believe I'm asking you to." She nuzzles his skin and he sighs, sliding a hand under her hair. Her breath spins out long and faint, stuttering into the silence. "I'm going to get you killed. I'm going to get myself killed."

He strokes her face. She turns and kisses his palm, her mouth blind and soft.

"I can't think when you do things like that." He buries his words in her hair.

"If you think too much you'll be overcome with fear. Oh God, kiss me, Lewis, please. Please."

"I like the sound of that. Beg me some more."

"Please, Lewis. Please. Please. Please kiss me. I need it." The words come fast and soft, tumbling all over each other. "Please." Her lips part, her mouth pushing up toward his. "Oh Lewis, _please_!"

He lifts up her chin. Mira stands on her tiptoes and puts a hand on the back of his neck, pulling him down. It's a wild landing, full of secret weather. The sweat rises up out of her belly, dizzy and tingling along her skin. The motions of his mouth gather it up hot and clench it tight inside her cunt. He sinks into her, a stone unlocked by her hungry tongue. Her restless body rubs against his moorings until he feels raw, trapped inside his racing heart. He pulls out of the kiss enough to take a deep breath. He touches her moist lips with his fingertips. The pool of her mouth trembles like the fleeting moments before sunrise.

"I love you."

"I know."

"May I kiss your feet?"

"Yes. You may."

He gets on his knees. He pulls up the loose cuff of her pants and lowers his face to the carpet, kissing the inside of her arch. It feels like a blush of stamens on her skin, a butterfly breathing. His nose slides up the front of her ankle, his hands moving over her instep as if shaping it, molding the bones to his mouth. He feels the texture of her skin awaken inside of him. Each tiny hair tickles his breath, her faint earthy scent fermenting in his blood. His mouth kindles heat that slinks up the backs of her legs.

"Lewis," she whispers.

He groans and slips the tip of his tongue between her toes. Her cunt contracts and her burning face flares in the darkness. "That's nice." Her breath slides back and forth. "I like it."

He breathes against the pulsing vein in her instep. He reaches beneath the loose cuff of her pants to caress the fullest part of her calf.

His mouth shapes a boundary on the outside of her foot that he crosses with his fingers. Soft threads of sensation break beneath her skin. She closes her eyes and spins behind them, trapped within her own soft darkness as he climbs her Achilles' tendon and crowns it with a kiss. The air quivers around her face. Each tendril of hair prickles at the root. He rests his coarse cheek on her toes and the flush in his skin anchors her bones to the floor. His fingers are cool and feather-light around her ankle.

"May I stand?

She breathes her heartbeat into the moment. "Yes."

He rises up. Her eyes follow the form of his unfolding body, assembling the thinly sliced light as it strikes the topography of his clothes and outlines pale geometric shapes of skin, as it gleams in the deep cup of an eye. She moves aside and releases more of the light, watching it fall into the crevices and make the angles sharper, watching it soften the rounded places. It draws dark lines from his hair. It fills his eyelashes. She looks up into his eyes and is suddenly aware of the slightness of her bones, how all of them are huddling in his shadow and humming to each other. Heat shimmers inside her veins, climbing those inside walls, looking for a place to sleep. His gaze falls into hers and slides deep, down into places where the pressure is too much to bear.

Her breath catches. "I can't look anymore."

He touches the corner of her closed eyelid. He leans forward and kisses the side of the bridge of her nose. She makes a soft inarticulate noise. He lifts up her chin and kisses her mouth.

"Where?"

"Upstairs."

* * *

She felt each drop of sweat tremble before it evaporated. Her water went into the dimness of the room and made itself cold.


	13. A Steep Price (Interlude)

_It was like the night itself had crawled down into her skin she wished for a plate something that could slip out of her fingers and shatter maybe the sound would wake her up maybe it would cut away this feeling of nighttime crawling through her muscles making its way down to her bones and nibbling on them with little diamond teeth_

I want the plate I want the musical glass

The front door stood ajar. Air became the most precious thing in the world. Her lips formed weightless words. Without the driving force of sound her mouth felt stupid.

"There is a very long explanation for this," he murmured. "It is very long, and I will tell it to you. Mira, may I touch you?"

"No. No, I don't think so. This is a dream. I'm dreaming this. There's a lot of detail to this dream, yeah? It's cold tonight. I wonder if I left the windows cracked. Yes. I bet I did. I bet I did." She tittered. "I'm shivering in my sleep. Unless you're a ghost. Now wouldn't that be special."

"Mira."

"Adam. May I stick my fingers in your wounds? Do you have them, or has my mind spared me the gross detail?"

"I'm so sorry about this. There was no other way."

She turned her back and wandered into the house. "When I dream about you, we usually talk about Sarah. Would you like to talk about Sarah?"

"I would love to."

"Do dead men drink?"

He sighed. "Mira—"

She was in the kitchen, a glass in her hand. She hiccuped, her fingers clenching around the glass, and he saw that she wasn't hiccuping at all but rather struggling against the threat of sobs. Her mouth trembled, chin vibrating like she was cold, and the muscles in her hand spasmed before they relaxed and she had her falling glass after all. The shattering noise moved through her. She backed away from it, moved into a cabinet, and started to cry. The sobbing came ahead of the tears. Adam closed the door and went into the kitchen. He watched her cover her face. "This isn't real," she said. "I'm not really here."

"You are really here," he said. "And so am I."

"Sarah is asleep. So is Will. So am I. So are you." She laughed and wept. "If you can call death sleeping. The big sleep. I don't want to dream about you tonight, Adam. Go back to where you came from."

"What would you like to dream about?"

"Home," she whispered. "I want to go home. I want to teach again. I can't do either of those things. I paid a very steep price for you."

"Was I worth it?"

She cried harder. "Yes."

He offered a hand. She took hold of it, her fingers stained with snot. He hauled her to her feet with a sweet strong motion. She rocked back on her heels and slapped him across the face. He tensed into it. She slapped him again, putting the full force of her weight behind it, and she bit her lip and hissed through her teeth at the impact. The joints in her hand flowered with a dozen dull aches. She made a fist, striking him in the nose. It broke something in his posture. He touched the blood below his nostrils and looked at it red and hot upon his fingers and he looked at her, at the flush in her face and the tightness in her jaw. "Does it make you feel better?"

She nodded.

He touched her chin. "Is it nice?"

Mira wakes into the gasping silence.

The tension, the revulsion, the sticky lust melts into her jackhammer heartbeat. She looks at the light fixture and counts the panels of frosted glass, trying to calm her breath. Her nose itches and she wipes it and the side of her hand flashes into a slant of orange streetlight. A rusty streak gleams across the knuckles.

She lifts up her head, glancing at her pillow. Two bloodstains scatter across the pale slip like coins of different denominations.


	14. Confession

It's very late and I can't sleep, so I'm in the back yard smoking a cigarette. A strong scent of the sea hangs in the sweating air. I hear the radio playing in on a porch down the street, turned low to a classical station. There are dogs barking.

Mira slips out through the back door. "I need to tell you something," she says.

I look at her. She tucks the loose hair behind her sweating temples and shakes a cigarette free from the pack. She's wearing a nightdress that looks like a long red t-shirt.

"Yes?"

"I need to ask you something."

"Well, then." I hand her the lighter. "Which is it?"

"I could smell these things through the window," she said. "I haven't smelled them in…well, in years."

"Why ever do you have the window cracked open? It's hot enough out here to cook a codfish."

"I know," she said. "I like the night noises. And I couldn't sleep anyway."

I gesture to the stoop. "Have a seat, then."

She does. She plays with the lighter, flicking it open to make a flame and then snapping it shut with her nimble fingers. _Click, snap. Click, snap_. "Adam knew about Lewis."

I inhale smoke. I listen to the dogs in the distance.

"You can admit it. I don't hold it against you for holding it back." She lights her cigarette. "If, of course, that's what you did. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, we can move on. To a new subject. Like the weather, perhaps. How hot it is."

"I know what you're talking about." I flick my ashes into an empty pineapple tin. "He knew."

Mira puts her knees together beneath the hem of her nightdress and looks down at the curved space between her shins. She puts the lighter on the step between us. "Do you know why he never did anything about it?" I feel her eyes climb up the side of my face. "Because he never did."

I exhale smoke. "No."

"Is that 'no' you don't know?" She makes a shallow puff of smoke. "Or 'no' you _do_ know but you aren't going to share?"

"That's 'no' he didn't go into detail."

"I see." She smiles. "Just that he knew."

I stub out the butt of my cigarette. "You don't smoke."

"No," she says. "But I can pretend."

"Why would you?"

She glances at her glowing coal, at the smoke unrolling into the darkness. "It's about memory. I'm allowed my memories however I can catch them. Don't you think so?" She takes another draw, like someone smoking a cigar. "My father smoked. I miss him sometimes." She pauses. "Lewis smoked, too."

I look at her. "And do you miss him sometimes?"

Mira rubs her heel on the concrete. She holds the cigarette up beside her head. "I presume you saw the coverage of his death. If not at the time it happened, then later on." Her voice lightens, turns slightly mocking. "After the big revolution. Yes?"

"I might've seen something." I stretch out my legs. "I didn't pay it much mind at the time."

She swings her hair onto her thighs. A laugh creeps into her voice. She takes a suck off the cigarette and underscores her words with smoke. "Your brother's kingdom was coming apart at the seams and you didn't pay it much mind?"

I shrug. "Never was much of a tailor, was he?"

She grinds out her cigarette. "And what did you ever do?"

"Failed, I suppose. But I did it quietly."

"How lovely for you."

"Yes. I suppose it is."

"Lewis isn't dead. I don't know where he is, but he isn't dead." She lets out a long pursed breath. "I don't know who else knows. Maybe his sister. She lives in Sydney. Maybe his nephew…he lives in Sydney, too. He was my student…before. You know." She flicks her hair out of her face. "It was part of the arrangement, to keep everyone who knew in the dark about it. It was a very complicated arrangement. I…did it. Mostly. It's very easy to pull strings when you're in the right place. Very easy to make arrangements like that and make sure that they follow through. Of course the money helps. Did Adam know that, too?"

I fold my hands. "I don't know. If he did, he never shared it with me."

"Is Adam really dead?"

I look at her. She's looking back, eyes wide and pupils dilated in the low light. I see the fear coiled inside of them, nascent but waiting.

"I keep dreaming about him," she goes on. "I dream of him coming back here. Sometimes he's got a lame leg or an arm that doesn't work properly. Sometimes he's tanned, like he's been hiding out in Thailand or some such place. I suppose if he was and he didn't want you to tell me then you wouldn't tell me." Her hands grasp each other and twist. "I never saw the body, you know. I had no time. I had to get out before the regime changed and the borders closed. There was coverage, of course, and all the broadcasts saying that they found him in the tunnels and whatnot but it's ridiculously easy to fake and I know that firsthand. I never told anyone and I know that telling you now is motivated by guilt and that I'm only doing it because I think it might make me feel better." She swallows. "I didn't feel bad about doing it, the cuckoldry or the other thing. I feel guilty that I didn't feel guilty. Like it's going to make up for the guilt I didn't have. I figured Adam had to know about Lewis because he knew everything. He made it his business to know everything and I was no exception and I knew that, I just…chose not to think of it. I don't know why he let me get away with it. I don't know why he let Lewis get away with it."

I sigh. "He expressed doubt to me over Sarah's paternity." I take my time the words. "He did have her tested, unbeknownst to you, and it's apparent the older she gets that she is Adam's daughter." I pick up the lighter. "I think it's very fortunate that my brother loved you to the exclusion of all other human beings. Including myself. Including, perhaps, his own child." I pause. "I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know."

Her knees are close to her chest, her arms wrapped tight around them. "I don't suppose you are."

"I cannot assuage your guilt. If Adam is alive, I don't know about it." I play with the lighter. _Click, snap. Click, snap_. "I wouldn't put it past him. I wouldn't put anything past him."

Mira picks up the pineapple tin. "I wouldn't, either."


	15. Empty Postcards

I.

Excerpted from Do You Remember The Pink Birds? (Sutler-Stanford, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2067)

_In my earliest memory, my mother is playing the piano. We are in a dim room that feels empty. The piano is a baby grand. Her hair is pulled back into a tired ponytail. She's wearing a soft blue cardigan that looks like a bathrobe. Her breasts look big and heavy. Rain rattles and hums against the windowpanes._

I smell roses hiding somewhere in the room. She's playing Moonlight Sonata.

II.

We have lived with her confession for a fortnight when she comes into my bedroom. I'm sitting at the edge of my bed, close to the night table, getting ready to pull open the drawer. The mattress shifts beneath her moving knees.

"I want you to tell me what you know." Mira says it on a slow exhale, the air strolling up the back of my neck on soft feet. "What do you know, Will?"

I straighten. "I don't know anything."

Mira holds my straight razor to my throat. "Do you know anything now?"

I fight the urge to stop breathing. "You want to loosen that up a bit, love?"

"You want to pray that my hand doesn't want to shake." She leans forward, touches my nape with the tip of her nose, and kisses the stiffened hairs. "While you're praying, you might want to think about what you're going to tell me."

I swallow. The blade touches my skin. "I don't know anything, Mira. We've already had this talk. Haven't we? Haven't we, love?"

"I'm tired, Will. I can't sleep anymore. Not I can't sleep as in I can't sleep more than a handful of hours a night, but I can't sleep as in I can't sleep. It began with the handful of hours but I'm starting to lose even those." She giggles. "I keep thinking about who would know, and I keep coming back to you." She rubs her face on my hairline. "So what else do you know?" She licks the edge of my earlobe. "Tell me everything."

"You're very tired, Mira. Would you like a sleeping tablet?"

"I want words." The fist holding the razor slides down, curls up, nestles the blade beneath my ear. "Words that will make a nice neat line in your mouth and sound off, one at a time." Her breath steams my hair. "I want you to do that for me. Can you do that for me?"

"I want to know why you don't believe me."

"Because I know you know how to lie," she whispers into my ear. "You're very good at it."

"I'm not lying now."

"I don't believe you. If anyone knows, it's you." She grabs a handful of my hair and uses it to shake my head. "You're the only one he would've trusted with such sensitive knowledge." She hauls my face closer to her mouth and murmurs the words into my cheek. "You don't think I'll do it, do you? You don't think I'd cut you open…" She kisses my temple, the highest part of my cheekbone. "And let you die here. You're wrong, Will. I would. You don't mean anything to me at all." Her nose burrows into my hair. Her breath comes steady and quick. "I don't know you. I could kill you now. I might even like it."

"I don't think you would."

"Why is that?"

"I have something you want. I'll take it with me if I die. That's not a lot of fun for you, is it?"

"I'm really tired, Will."

"I know."

"But I need to know. You understand, right? You understand that I need to know?" Her voice cracks. "It makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't it?"

"Yes, I understand." I touch her elbow. The blade trembles. "Yes. It makes sense."

"Tell me, Will. Tell me. Tell me the truth." Her anger flares up through her weariness. "I want to know. I need to know. I need it. I can't sleep without it. I close my eyes and it's all I can think about." She clenches her teeth. "Is he alive, Will? Is my husband still alive?"

"I-I think so."

"Why? Why do you think so?"

"I've gotten postcards."

"What kind of postcards?"

"With nothing on them. Just our address."

"What's on them? What are the photos?"

"From Thailand." I swallow. "Bangkok."

"How many?"

"Three."

"Where are they?"

"In my car."

Her breath rushes out of her. Her arm loosens. I reach up and pry the handle out of her fingers and fold up the razor and toss it onto the bedside table. I listen to the broken sail of her breath. I draw her hand into my lap. Her breath trips down three sharp stairs and falls flat as I press her hand to my hard-on.

"I love you." Her voice weakens. "I love you. I'm sorry. I do." I feel her other wrist moving, her fingers working between her thighs. "I can't help it…I'm so tired, Will, I can't sleep."

"I know." I take my cock out of my pants. Her fingers curl around it. I put my hand over hers, guiding her tentative strokes. "I know."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you."

"Shhh. Yes, that's it."

"Please hurt me."

"What?"

"Hurt me."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"I want you to."

"I want to fuck you."

"I want that too but I want you to hurt me first. Please do it." She nuzzles my neck and changes the angle of her arm, pushing her fingers in and out. "I'm so tired but I want you to make me hurt. I want you to make me come."

"Mira, you've lost your mind."

"I haven't."

"Yes, you have. You're nutters."

"I'm not." She climbs around and slides over my lap and lifts my chin. She kisses me, deep and hard, her mouth loose and hot. "Get inside of me," she whispers into my mouth. "Put your cock in me and slap my face and everything will get tight." She bites my bottom lip. "Do it hard." She fills my lungs with her harsh breath. "Both things, your cock and your hand." She puts my hand on her face. "Please?"

"Mira…"

"Shhh, Will, shhhh…shut up, don't think about it, just do it."

I gather her hair in my fists and peel her off me, pulling until she cries out, my ears full of her voice. Her thighs fall apart. I shift onto my knees and hold her down by the hair with one hand. I pull back the other, looking into her face, watching her mouth soften and her eyes darken. I wait until her chin quivers. I bring my hand down across her cheek and the contact rolls through me. My palm stings, gets hot, and her skin blooms, color that tingles and throbs in time with my itch to do it again. So I do it again. And again. I hit her face until the reddened skin starts to swell. Her little gasps quiver on broken notes. I let go of her hair and take hold of her throat. I tighten my grip. She looks up at me, her eyes raw.

_I love you_. She mouths the words.

I grab her by the upper arm and turn her over and pull up her nightdress. Her thighs squirm. I wrestle them apart. She braces her hands on the headboard and draws her knees up and lifts her ass. She's wet down the insides of her thighs. The smell of her cunt is a living thing and there is no room inside me for anything else. I take hold of her arms and pin them to the sweat-slicked small of her back. Her breath moves through me and encircles me, unfolding wings of heavy air.

"Is this what you need?"

Her moan floods the pillows.

"Goddammit, Mira! Answer the question!"

"Yes!" The words are strangled by the sheets. "Yes!"

I hold her wrists down. They twist in my grip, striking sparks off her tailbone.

"It's okay," she breathes. "It's okay."

I let go of her wrists. "No, it's not."

"I'm so tired, Will." She collapses onto the bed. She lies there with her arms at odd angles and breathes like she's crying even though she's not. "I can't sleep."

"I know, love." I put a hand on her spine. "I know."

III.

Excerpted from Do You Remember The Pink Birds? (Sutler-Stanford, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2067)

_This is how we did it_, she said, using her fingernail to trace an invisible road. It went into the Channel Islands, down along the cruel waters to Spain. _Here it was a high price to stay just long enough to stock up the boat. Here, there was a ride in a cargo plane across the Himalayas. The insulation in the body of the plane was inadequate, and it was very cold. Here it was a tanker on its way to Australia. By the time we got to Perth, it was simmering hot. I drove for days across the merciless landscape. I went deep into the night. It was something that I should not have done alone, it was dangerous, but back then I was alone, and I thought I might as well get used to it. So I got on the road and stayed there. I got so tired that I saw things crawl out from between the stars, out of the bars painted on the asphalt. At the end we were in Adelaide. _The map rustled, caught between her fingers and the blankets. _Do you remember Adelaide?_

I told her yes.

She smiled. It cost her a lot of effort. _Do you remember the pink birds?_

I said yes, Mum. I picked up her hand and said yes, I remember the pink birds.

IV.

I give up on sleep and walk into her bedroom. Mira is still awake, lost in the composition of her music. She has all the instruments she will need. When she sees me in the doorway she lines them up all in a row. She picks each one up and plays a little bit and then picks up another and plays a little of that one as well. _It's like this_, she says. _Only imagine all of it together, happening at once._

The windows are open. The outside light is on because Mira can see it through the window and she likes to watch the moths. She records their lacy patterns in her mind. I ask her what the stuttering loop of a moth sounds like and she says _madness and love and determination and a bit of fate…they're lovers, Will; they're futile winged things_. She likes to watch them and she likes to sit on her bed wearing a big t-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts. She likes to play her musical phrases for me even though I don't understand them.

_You do_, she says. _You understand them. You just don't know it yet_. I reach out and curl a bit of hair out of her face. I tuck it behind her ear and ask her how the moths are tonight. She looks up and the screened light runs from one cheek to the other. A brief shadow flutters across the bridge of her nose. _Hot. Rather, anticipating it_, she says. _The heat. They know it's coming_. I sit on the edge of her bed and ask her how she knows and she smiles. _It's in their wings, silly. Listen to them_. She cocks her ear toward the window. _It's like paper caught in a windstorm. It's like they're fanning themselves_. I gesture at the pile of instruments, at the sprawl of papers all marked up with notes. I push some of them off the bed and ask if she's going to record them. _Someday_. She shrugs. _But not today_.

I ask if she can tap out the rhythms of the moths and she giggles. _You know I can_.

I want to touch her. Any part of her. Her toenails, the backs of her knees, her eyelashes. I gesture that she should come closer. She's still grinning. _Why?_ I reach out for her and she hangs back. _I'll let you touch my shirt_. She sits on her heels and bows her back and pulls her big t-shirt up and off. She flings it onto the bed. _Go on. Touch it while it's still warm_. I pick it up, bunch it into a ball, and hold it to my face. I inhale and she watches me. I lean back and lie down on her bed, pulling the discarded shirt up across my bare chest. She touches my foot. _Do we love each other properly?_ I say that I don't know. I rub the shirt against my belly and she watches my hand as I wrap the bottom hem tight around one knuckle. I brush it across my bottom lip and kiss the soft cotton. Her eyelashes flutter.

What do you think?

_I don't know_. She moves closer and stretches out alongside of me. She leans over me and her lips flutter down, touching my skin, light silken kisses that bounce off my face. _I love you. May I love you?_

Of course.

_I want to love you properly_. She combs my hair back with her fingers and it lightens the spaces beneath my skin, quivers between the layers of my belly. My eyes close. Her voice comes to me in the darkness and kisses my waiting dreams. _Do you think the wanting is enough?_

Yes, Mira. I think the wanting is enough.

She kisses me and I stay there, adrift in the darkness, nerve to nerve, my breath all mixed into her smooth wet heat. I let my hands roam the topography of her body: shoulders floating beneath the skin, flanks quivering with air, bated buttocks. Her shorts whisper as they depart from her skin, and in the rising and falling motion of the darkness I feel her move across me, the humid velvet of her mouth and the slick wetness of her cunt sealing us into a circle.

When my limbs feel heavy, when my breath has gone back to sleep and my heart has come back to Earth, she touches the sweat on my neck and says _I want to call the songs that_.

Call the songs what?

_Futile Winged Things_.

V.

Are you going to tell me about your scars?

I don't know if I should.

Where did you get them?

It was a long time ago.

You've no suture marks at all. It's amazing.

No.

Did you fall backwards through a window?

No.

Do you want me to let this go?

If you like, I'll tell you a story.

Is it the truth?

I think all stories are true. Wouldn't you agree?

Yes.

Once upon a time there was a girl and this girl grew up in the vicinity of a prison. They were something of a family business, prisons. As you can imagine that kind of an environment has an effect on a child. I've never thought of it quite this way before and so you'll have to forgive what I get wrong.

This girl knew she was strange. She had felt so from a young age because she saw leg irons like bracelets and loved the sound of chain links rattling in lockstep. There was more to it. Dark feelings that came out of the gleam of boots and the gleam of eyes and still other things. Things that resist any attempt at explanation. When she became older, she fell in love with a man who knew all about those things, the things she couldn't describe even to herself. He knew them well enough to teach her how to find her own words. And he did. She learned them well. She was an eager student. And after awhile there came the day when using the ropes on her at home was no longer enough, and the canes weren't enough by themselves, and the whips too. Worshiping his body was no longer enough. She wanted to go further.

She'd heard his stories, the ones about being starved and how there was never enough to eat, how he killed things in alleys so he might have enough to eat, and the girl who was now a woman had never known any kind of privation and she wanted to know it. His words had laid the foundation in her. His voice. She wanted to go into the same prison she knew as a child, to get…broken there. To learn the stories from the inside out. So he put her there because it was in his power to do such things. There were charges and they were stupid and they don't matter, they didn't matter; what mattered were the…cold walls and the…electricity…and how she was made to piss on her feet and live with the sting of it, the smell of it…and there was the gnawing in her belly…emptiness full of little needle teeth and…the weakness…and chains. Chains that sing on the stones when you're…getting w-whipped…because they don't know any better. The blood that screams because it doesn't know any better. The woman bled from her back and it was almost enough. Almost. But blood isn't as stubborn as it wants to be…I think you know that. Hard to hear, isn't it?

Yes.

It's harder to say it.

I don't know what to say.

Don't say anything.

Do you want me to say something?

I don't care if you do or not. There are things I've left out, of course, because there are things you don't need to know. The unspoken places don't make it any less so.

Should I apologize?

No. There's nothing to apologize for.

That's not what I meant. I meant…I'm sorry that I don't have the right words, or any words at all. I meant that I wish I could do better.

You don't need words.

IV.

Excerpted from Do You Remember The Pink Birds? (Sutler-Stanford, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2067)

_The doorbell rang during supper, I remember that. I was sitting on the floor when Will opened the door. Though he was a young man, Leo looked ancient to my eyes, old and exotic, an ambassador dispatched from the far-away land of adulthood. I had a piece of meat from the table and was trying to teach our ginger cat how to do tricks. My mother told me to stop teasing the cat, who was unimaginatively named Orange. Leo looked somber. Following a moment's whispering, he and Will went into the kitchen. My mother joined them. The cat's ears folded back and she shrank away from the meat, and I saw these things before I heard my mother's grief coming out of the kitchen. I thought she had hurt herself and was crying, remembering the time she'd cut her fingers open on a broken glass, but it didn't sound the same---she sounded like something had been taken away from her, ripped out of her skin, like the way I'd felt when she'd taken something, some beloved toy or privilege, away from me. But there was more to it. The tone in her voice scared me, and my unfocused fear communicated itself to Orange, and she dashed off and squirmed her way underneath my bed. I remember wishing I could follow her into the comforting floor wax-scented darkness._

For three days, my mother refused to leave her bedroom. She kept the curtains drawn. Will brought her meals the way he would bring food to an invalid, and he stayed in there with her for long stretches of silent time. Once I heard her crying in the middle of the night as I crept across the hallway toward the bathroom.

Later of course there were news reports, but it wasn't until I was much older that I learned and understood the full story of what had happened: Lewis Prothero had taken his own life.


	16. On A Beautiful Autumn Morning

Mira stood at the living room window and held the lace curtain aside.

The car was black. It slowed in front of the house, backed up when it had passed the entrance to the driveway, and parked so its nose was lined up with the walkway. The driver's side door opened. Ice cold adrenaline kicked her in the heart. _So it's like this_, she thought. _I can't breathe and yet I am breathing_. Her heart labored in its frosty cage. The sunlight fell down inside her hands and she couldn't think of what to do with it; the rays felt like so many hot butterflies perched upon her fingertips. _The sun is out. It's mild. It's like this. Like this_. The man in the car wore linen pants and a shirt of very thin cotton. She could see the sun charging through it and suffusing the loose armpits, carving a body out of shadow beneath. The sight took up strange frequencies inside her body. Her veins hummed at mundane memories: the shadow curling around a cup, the scent of used soap suds, the taste of an aggressively green leaf. _I'm strangling the curtain. Such a beautiful morning_. The adrenaline turned over inside her, attempting to spend itself. Her mouth filled with metal. He looked at the door and she looked at him: looser hair, no beard, time spent in the sun, fewer lines. He glanced at the window. _It's like this! Like this! Like this!_ She couldn't stop swallowing. The sweat stood out on her skin and worked its way into deep shivers. She put her hands on the warm glass. _On a beautiful autumn morning the sun was shining and my husband completed his journey back from the dead_. Her heart slammed into her ribs with a primitive and aggressive rhythm. Her breath rose up and down, up and down. Her fingers spread on the glass. _It's to be like this on a beautiful autumn morning with roses a-blooming inside my shaking knees. Here it is_. He stepped closer to the window and put his hand on the outside of the glass. A shock moved through her and cemented her feet to the floor. The expression on his face was all hieroglyphs chiseled on the backs of the fleeting seconds and try as she might she could not catch them. _I'm not so fast as that now open the door and let him in_. In her mind's eye she saw herself reaching out and imagined the cool smoothness of the knob touching her palm. _Do it like this_. She felt the lock give way like a bone that yearns to be broken. She saw the grace of the hinges as they spread open and the shadow of the door flying across the room.

Mira took her hands off the glass. She turned away from the window and cool air passed over her forehead. Her feet carried her to the door. She touched the wood with trembling fingertips, stroked in the direction of the grain. Cool air billowed across the back of her neck. She pulled open the door and filtered sunlight flowed in, surrounding her, filling her eyes. She tried to wipe the glare away and used her forearm to shade her face.

_On a beautiful autumn morning._

Roses a-blooming.

Like this.

A dead man back to life.

"Hello, Mira."

Lightning crashed into the corners of her eyes. The world lightened inside her lungs and her breath slipped out between her lips and she fainted.

***

His hand, my husband's hand. It settles on my forehead, the knuckles on my hairline, the thumb light and hovering between my eyebrows. My body quivers in one place, then quivers somewhere else, the reaction chasing itself through my guts, fleeting in my limbs and coming to rest in my lips. His palm, creased with life, smooth and thickened, warm fingers staking an old claim. It casts a long shadow that floats on my blood. He strokes my nose. I rise out of the darkness like a tender bubble.

"Shhhh." My lips tingle. He kisses the corner of my mouth and every lost moment between us fills to bursting. "Where is our daughter?"

I start to weep. "She's at school."


	17. Letters, December 2039.

1 December 2039

_My Dear Mira,_

In the morning I shall be wheeled in for my third surgery. This one is to reset something in my left shin. I don't know precisely what, and I am so wearied of surgeries that I no longer care about the whys and wherefores, but my doctors insist that if I wish to walk properly again it must be done. My first surgery was purely cosmetic. These doctors took fifteen years off my face and hid the evidence of their presence in my hairline. There are thin scars behind my ears that I cannot see. They feel like silk floss stitched into the skin.

I am still in a lot of pain. My days are measured by the dispensation of pills, sponge baths, spoonfuls of food, and excursions to the terrace in order to take the air. It is foul and breathlessly humid stuff, and hot even in the shade. I don't understand the fanatic enthusiasm in this country for hot air and sunshine. I far prefer the conditioned cool of my room, but I will not bore you with such things.

To say that I miss you is to say something absurd in its obviousness; the sun is hot, the ice is cold, and I miss you. I wish for you every morning before I open my eyes and every night after I close them. All day long it is yellow-skinned nurses with coconut breath and ruthless little fingers. I love you in my pain, in my opiate haze, in my apathy and in my restlessness. I will say it again as you read this letter and I am beside you, watching your lips move around the words: I love you. I will ask your forgiveness for what I have done. Were I God, I don't know that I'd place much weight on the wishes of a man like me, but nonetheless I pray that you and Sarah are well and that I shall see both of you in good time.

Yours,

Adam

14 December 2039

_My Dear Mira,_

The rains have come and the wind rattles the shutters and it is always splashing against the stones of the porch. The air smells of mud and strong plants brought into a frenzy of growth by the sun. It is jungle beyond my windows, and what noise. All night long the darkness is made fraught with the utterances of wild things.

I have completed all of my surgeries and weathered a trying bout of illness. I live with a rotation of staff in a village plagued with aggressive monkeys and gifted with an abundance of fruit trees. Were Sarah older, I think this place would delight her with its simplicity. Were I myself a child, even a sickly one, I have no doubt that the novelty of monkeys would make up for the lack of familiarity and comfort. In these hot nights, swathed in mosquito netting, I am seduced by the memory of her, and of you, and of the house in London where we made her, and I cannot find it in my heart to love any part of this house or the land that it sits upon. This riotous jungle is no match for home.

Yours,

Adam

24 December 2039

_My Dear Mira,_

It occurs to me that I should try to explain myself to you. I should tell you why, and how, and explain the mechanics of how I came to be here. There are details that I won't write down because they are too sensitive and I fear them falling into the wrong hands. The rest I will tell to you, because I would have you know them, and I would give you the knowledge that I wished for you to know them before I could tell them to your face, that I have thought of nothing but you and our child since the beginning of my long confinement in the steaming backwater of this continent.

That everything I had worked to build should succumb to entropy was no surprise to me, as it is the ultimate fate of all hastily built states, and it was arranged that I should leave the country by water in the case of an attempted assassination. The plan was secured by a secret coterie and executed with little difficulty. Regardless of what you may have seen on the newscasts, there were few shots fired and all of them went wild save the bullet that struck my left shin. I don't know what became of my would-be assassin. I escaped the tunnels and my injury was stabilized for the duration of the long and harrowing journey. I arrived to this country exhausted and weakened, on the brink of illness. Following a fortnight of recuperation, the doctors began the odyssey of repairing my leg and erasing years from my face. My leg aches in the ceaseless rains and when I look in the mirror I see a different man, but that was the intent. If I don't see myself, neither shall anyone else.

It is Christmas Eve, and I'm wishing for a roasted chicken and some country bread and a bit of snow and of course for you and Sarah. I would like to mail this letter to you and receive a reply in which you describe your Christmas holiday so that I might imagine myself a part of it. I'm so sorry that I cannot. I love you, I crave you, I feel keenly your absence in all of my days.

Yours,

Adam

30 December 2039

_My Dear Mira,_

I have fallen ill again. I fear this wretched climate might smother the life out of me.

Yours,

Adam


	18. End

_In the beginning it was like this:_

"Yes?"

I won't breathe I should stop what I'm doing I'll stop I should stop happening

"Yes," she said.

Breathing silence. "How are you?"

"I'm…I'm." It felt heavy, the sound of him. "I am."

"Yes."

"Yes." She closed her eyes. "I want to know what you're doing right now."

"I'm sitting at a desk."

"What is the desk like?"

"It's large and fashioned out of dark wood. This wood is very smooth to the touch. There are a lot of papers on it. It's nearly covered, in fact. I see very little of this wood and touch it even less. Is that the sort of thing you want to know?"

"Would you touch it?" Her fingers curled around the handset. "Right now?"

"Yes," he said. "If that's what you want."

"It's what I want."

"Very well. I'm using the side of my thumb on the edge. I don't need to move my hand much to do it. Just a slight turn of the palm, and…there it is. There's a small scratch in the wood, the kind you don't see with your eyes. It feels interesting."

"Describe it to me."

"It's very small and narrow and it doesn't span the full width of the wood. It's sharp, like a hair. Something happened here with careless precision, something like…a cufflink, something hard and with fashioned edges."

"Do you remember putting it there?"

"No."

"Please," she whispered.

"What do you want, Mira?"

"I-I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

"Tell me to do something," she whispered.

"I won't."

"Why not?"

"I want to know what you're doing right now."

"I'm sitting at a desk." She swallowed and glanced around. "This isn't my desk. It's…it's clean, and there's a vase with a plastic flower in it. It's yellow. It's…a r-rose, and it has those little plastic droplets on the petals to make it look like dew. There's dust on it."

"What else?"

"There's a frame with changing pictures on it. One of those digital displays. The frame is silver and black and it's, um…polished. It shows a house, and a cat, and some small boys, and a little old woman with pin curls wearing a bow tie."

"What else?"

She looked down at her hand. "I have a cut on my thumb. I-It's…small."

"Does it hurt?"

"No." She touched it. "It's old. There's a scab on it, but it's mostly fallen off by now. It goes over the deep part. Of the cut. The new skin is smooth and pink and…" Her voice dropped. "It's shiny."

"I want you to rub the rest of the scab off. Do it right now."

She propped the phone between her shoulder and her chin her breath hit the mouthpiece, rubbed against it she pressed on the length of the cut with her opposite thumb until the dried blood disengaged and rolled like crumbs of sand

"Is it gone? Yes, it is, isn't it? Your breath gives you away."

Heat bloomed in her face. "It's gone."

"Is it bleeding?"

"No."

"I want you to breathe on the new skin."

"Yes."

"How does it feel?"

"Like…like…something is crawling inside it on little feathered feet."

"I want you to touch it…with just the tip of your tongue. Will you do that for me?"

Mira waited for her breath to subside, and when it did she heard the rising sound of his.

"Do it slow," he said. "Don't rush into it, I want you to take your time and anticipate it. Think about what you are going to do."

She nodded.

"Speak, Mira. I need you to speak. I cannot see you."

"Yes, yes…I'm thinking about it."

"Prepare the skin with your breath, warm it up, and then…then. Just a touch. Just a tease. Just a…little tiny taste."

Her tongue trembled and slid forward, brushing the raw skin. Her breath snagged on a whimper.

"Oh, yes. Yes. Yes."

"I taste metal, a-and s-salt, and…" She pushed her tongue against the skin. "A-And it feels…feels like…"

"What do you want, Mira?"  


***

Excerpted from Do You Remember The Pink Birds? (Sutler-Stanford, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2067)

_It is my hope that I have given them a fair telling, and for any mistakes or injustices feel free to blame me. Despite the indisputable ugliness of history, they were my parents, they did well by me, and I loved them very much._


	19. Epilogue - Cut Scenes and The Stories Behind Them

Conversation And Proposal

_In the very beginning of the story, I considered the idea that Mira might choose Lewis over Adam. I had wanted to have a scene where Mira explains the terms of her imprisonment aloud, so I wrote this scene to try and get a feel of how it would play out if she told these things to Lewis. In many ways, writing this scene showed me all of the reasons why she would never choose Lewis to be her husband, and so it was good that I had written it even though I would never use it._

***

"Are you ever going to tell me about those scars?"

"I don't think so," says Mira.

"Why not?"

She pulls the blankets up over her shoulders. "You don't need to know."

Lewis takes the blanket in one hand and gathers it, one fold at a time, into his fist. The edge falls down around her waist. "Were you in prison?"

Mira tucks the pillow beneath her chin. "This conversation is over."

"No, it isn't over," he says. "As far as I can tell, we are in fact still having it."

"We're still having it only because you refuse to shut up."

He touches her shoulder blade. "If you had any ability at all to effectively apply silence, I might've given up."

"I doubt it."

He chuckles. "I doubt it myself. But I'll tell you what I think."

"An army of demons standing on your mouth couldn't stop you."

"I think you were in prison," he says. "And I think it wasn't so long ago, and I think perhaps it may have been over something trivial, and…what's more I think there is more, at least I get that feeling of more. It's always there, that more feeling."

"What do you mean, that more feeling? What is that supposed to mean, exactly?"

"Oh, you know, all those spaces between people that won't be filled up." He pauses. "I know you don't always sleep."

"Spaces," she says.

"Yes." He traces one of the scars with the edge of a nail. "You could lie to me, you know. Make up a story. It would satisfy my curiosity and lead me to believe that I know something more about you, and depending on the skill of your mendacity it may even lead me to believe that I know more about you than you know about me, creating an immediate illusion in my mind of having gained the upper hand. And since every man wants to believe that he has the upper hand, it would afford me a sense of security in my manhood and allow me to desist touching your back and to shut my fucking flapping gums and roll over and go to sleep. Yet you don't, which makes me think that you enjoy having attention paid to your scars even while you insist that you don't want to talk about them. It also makes me think that you see yourself as some kind of slave to honesty, both of which I find…terribly terribly interesting."

"Is that because you lie every day as a matter of course?"

"No, I don't think so. I'm accustomed to having my metaphorical spittle licked every single damned day, and I rather like it that you won't."

"And how do I know if that's a lie?"

"You don't," he said. "Your cold shoulder sucks, by the way. I'd feel a bit frostier if you weren't smiling."

"I am not smiling."

"I see why you don't bother lying. You suck at that as well."

She turns over and she is smiling. "Maybe I am lying and I'm just too good at it."

"Perhaps. Were you in prison?"

"Yes, I was."

"May I ask why?"

"No, you may not."

"May I ask why not?"

"Where is all this etiquette coming from?"

"For Christ's sake, Mira, I wasn't born in a fucking field. Catch more flies with honey and all that shit. Though shit works a far sight better than honey, now that you mention it."

The smile turns one-sided. "I didn't mention it."

"Did it have something to do with your father?"

The smile vanishes. "It absolutely did not."

He moves a strand of hair out of her face. "When were you released?"

"Awhile ago, now. A year and three months."

"Not so long before we met."

"No. Not so long at all."

"Why were you released?"

"I have no idea."

"Are you sure about that? Because you don't sound sure about that."

"I don't want to talk about this. I want you to stop using my fatigue to your advantage and please allow me to go to sleep. I've had a very long day."

"Tell me to shut up."

"You'll have to settle for 'go to sleep.' Go to sleep, Lewis."

"I want to know the story. It doesn't even have to be true."

Mira sighs. "Once upon a time, there was an interrogator. This interrogator and I knew each other before and had something of a…unique relationship. The charges were negligible, as they sometimes are, and blown way out of proportion to justify my imprisonment. All of this was an elaborate scheme to use a detention facility as a playroom for extreme interrogation-themed BDSM scenes. My father commanded Stonewall for most of my life, as you well know, and I became familiar with the facility that way. The imprisonment was a negotiated ordeal for me, in the role of submissive, the details of which were to be orchestrated by my dominant without my prior knowledge but with my complete consent. Upon the completion of this ordeal, all charges were nullified and relegated to the sort of thing that can be purchased off a record with a substantial sum. In this case, the fee was a million pounds. I was released, I received treatment for my injuries, and I went home."

"I'm going to take back every insulting thing I've said regarding your skills of confabulation." He starts to chuckle. "That is the most outlandish load of codswallop I've ever been served and I've been served some outrageous shit. But you're very convincing. I almost believed you."

She smiles. "You think I'm lying?"

He laughs. "Of course you're lying, but you're so very clever about it."

"Out of curiosity…how can you tell?"

"Interrogators don't have that kind of power," he says. "It takes a higher reach than that to expunge charges, no matter how confounded and ridiculous, from one's record."

"For the sake of hypothetical conversation, then, what would it take?"

"I've never heard of a complete elimination of charges. Not since…well, since you were quite young. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but people generally exit those places in body bags."

"I understand that, Lewis, but this is a hypothetical situation, isn't it?"

"Oh, well, yes. Of course it is. Carry on."

"So how high?"

He shrugs. "Our High Chancellor can do whatever he wants."

Mira props herself up on her elbows. "And you don't think Chancellor Sutler could find it within himself to expunge all of my ridiculous and confounded charges?"

"Well if he did, following the plot of this little story, it would mean he created them in the first place."

"Yes, that's right. I suppose it would."

"You are an awful, awful woman, to put such awful things into my head. Do you want to know what I am imagining right now, thanks to you? You should give up the piano and become one of those ladies' novelists. Perhaps it could be your second career."

"You said it yourself, love: it doesn't have to be true."

"Yes, I did, didn't I? I suppose I asked for it, then."

"You did. And since you think I'm lying," says Mira, "and since there is a tiny kernel of truth hidden in every story…"

"I'd bet the whipping part is true. You are one dirty bitch."

"There will come a day, Lewis, when you'll say these things and you won't laugh."

"You do know I'll think of this the next time I'm speaking with the Chancellor, don't you?"

Mira snorts and starts to laugh.

"I will! He'll be saying something dead boring, like 'you really need to further address the position of this country and its superiority in juxtaposition with the rest of the world, which by-the-by is nothing more than a disease-ridden sump' and I'll be imagining you curled up on a dirty prison floor licking his boots."

She giggles. "Do you think that's sexy?"

"No, not particularly."

"Not even a little?"

"No!"

Mira slides close to him and puts her arms around him. She smiles into his neck. "Would it be sexy if they were your boots?"

"I don't want to see you on the floor. Not like that."

"Mmmmm. That's almost sweet." She rubs her nose along his jaw. "Would you like to fuck?"

"I'm being serious."

"I know. So am I." She rests her cheek on his shoulder. "Please note that I did place emphasis on the word 'almost.'"

"A woman doesn't belong on the floor."

"Even if she wants to be there?"

"No one wants to be there."

"You just don't understand."

"What is there to understand?"

"Sometimes it's the only language someone understands. Sometimes it's the only language someone knows how to speak."

"What language is that? The 'please treat me like a piece of garbage' language? What's so fucking special about that? People speak that language to each other every day. There's nothing special about it."

"It isn't rape. When done properly it's about love and respect."

"Whatever happened to flowers and jewelry and a plain old 'I love you'? Gone the way of the boring old shag, I suppose."

Mira sighs. "You don't understand."

"No. I guess I don't."

"I'm going to sleep."

"Were you really in prison?"

"Yes, I really was."

"Did they hurt you?"

"Yes."

He pauses. "I'm sorry for that."

Mira leans over and kisses his cheek. "It's not your fault. Now I'm really going to sleep."

"Well, thank you for answering me. Even if it wasn't the least bit true. I do appreciate it."

"You're welcome."

"Mira?"

She turns over and settles. "What?"

"Would you like to get married?"

Eric Hamlin, Of Devonshire

_I wrote this scene before I decided that Adam had in fact faked his death and would be coming back into Mira's life. In an earlier version of events, I'd had the idea of someone discovering who Mira was and using it as a catalyst to get them out of Australia and into a new locale. As things went on and Mira became more and more involved with living in Australia, and in living with Will, I ditched the idea._

***

Excerpted from Do You Remember The Pink Birds? (Sutler-Stanford, Valerie Veritas Publications, London: 2067)

_Then came the day we had to run. I suppose that I always knew it would come, but like many others before me I put off its eventuality until I could pretend that nothing would ever change, that we were safe and that by the force of accumulated time we would always remain so._

It was a young man I had seen around the neighborhood---a no-one, really, the sort of fellow that is in the background and is exceptional at being nothing at all. Afterward his face came to me in flashes, embedded in all the places I had seen him. He was a writer, this young man. Or so he said.

There is much pride and stupidity braided together in young people. This young man told me that he was a writer after he had told the lie that brought him through my front door---that he was the repairman for the stove and that Will had called him. I made him iced tea while he told me that he was a writer and that he was going to write a book about old England. He waited until my back was turned before he did it, the thing that earned his death: he addressed by my married name.

I pardoned myself, went into the washroom, took down the handgun and came back out and I put the muzzle to the back of his head and fired. It made very little noise. It might've been a child's cracker or a disgruntled automobile. It was a small caliber bullet and so there was little blood. I don't remember much after that. I think I called Will straightaway, but I can't be sure. I think I sat in the kitchen and opened a window to smell the roses, but I cannot be sure of that either. I know that Will came home and found me at the kitchen table with the remaining bullets out and lined up on the scratched and dented wood. I know that he took them away from me and took the gun and asked me if I was all right.

I remember the body. Flesh is very heavy when all life has left it. He was still warm when I touched him. I plugged the hole in the back of his head with a tampon and covered it with a broad piece of electrical tape. I wanted to be appalled at my efficiency but I was too efficient for that. Will used a sledgehammer to break the bones just enough to put him in the freezer. A bone breaking beneath a carefully landed blow does not sound like a house collapsing or a dry branch parting company with a dead trunk; it sounds the way something that doesn't know it is no longer alive might sound at the moment it loses its voice. We put him in the freezer in the garage and when you came home from school I fixed you a snack and we went out into the garden. After supper we ate ice cream. Later on, after you were in bed, I threw it back up. You slept well that night because I put a sedative in your milk. I locked all the doors and nailed the windows shut and it is the only time in your childhood that I ever left you alone.

We took the body to the sea. We sailed out into international water and tied weights to the young man's wrists and ankles and we tossed him overboard. I threw the handgun with its bullets into the water.

I'm sorry, Sarah. We did what we had to do.

A Landscape of Salt

_This is the reactionary scene to Adam's arrival. I cut it form the final version because I felt the emotional rawness of it gave the ending of the story too much weight; it felt like the kind of weight that wants to flow onward, and I didn't feel that I could sustain its promise. It does a fine job of showing both how things have changed between them and how things have not changed much at all._

***

"Why did you do this to me?" Mira made meandering circles, touching things as she passed them, using her fingertips to anchor herself. "Why did you do this to me? Why? How could you? How could you do this to Sarah? Your own flesh and blood!" Her body tensed, jerking the side of her hand into a pile of magazines. They flopped to the floor, slithering open all over one another, and she flinched at the sound. "She doesn't even know you. She won't know you!" Her tight expression wavered. "She'll be afraid of you because…you're new, she's a…a reserved child, and distrustful of new things, and new people, and….God damn it! God damn it, this is making me angry, you are making me angry, I don't want to be angry!" She stomped her foot. "I don't like it, I don't feel like it's right. I don't want to be mad but you're giving me no choice."

"It was plausible deniability, Mira. It was necessary."

She pointed her words at him and fired them off. "Fuck your plausible deniability. I am still a widow, Adam. Just because you're here and not dead doesn't change that. You made me a widow and now you have to live with it." She moved her hair back with both hands and held it. She stared at the wall. "How am I going to explain to your daughter that you aren't dead? You know she doesn't understand death as it is, I've worked very hard to try and explain it to her in words that she can digest, and I've worked to ensure your presence as a memory in her life, and now…poof! Gone! All gone. All of that work means absolutely nothing! How…how dare you? How dare you treat me this way? How dare you treat your child this way? Disappear like some genie…into a bottle…oh I'm not making any sense at all, am I?" She covered her face with her hands. "Why didn't you tell me? You could've told me. I can keep a secret. I could've."

He said nothing.

She wiped her eyes. "Do you want something to drink?"

"That's not necessary."

"Are you sure?"

"Am I sure that a drink is unnecessary? Yes. I'm sure."

Mira wandered into the kitchen. "How about something to eat?" She opened a cabinet. "How long has it been since you've eaten?"

He followed her. She took down a plate and he put his hand on her wrist. "I don't want you to fetch me anything."

She turned around, her waist settling into the curve of his arm. She drifted into the layer of heat given off by his body and as he touched the small of her back she cast her eyes downward. "I am no longer familiar with you," she said. "I need to get used to it. I don't remember how to…bear your presence."

He moved her hair out of her face. The motion of his hand in the periphery of her vision made her dizzy. He curved his palms around her cheeks and kissed her forehead. She leaned into it, her lungs filling with calm. He read the set of her mouth with the tips of his fingers. Her arms slid up around his neck and he brushed her lips with his. Her blood leapt to the fore, throbbing through her breath. She fitted her mouth to his. He ended the kiss on its threshold, pulling back just enough to see if she'd follow.

"More," she whispered.

He steadied her chin. The sensation of his mouth opened flower petals inside her skin. They fell down through the darkness of her body, loose and drifting and sweet. Her tongue burrowed into hot velvet. He inhaled her breath, sending it back sharpened and dangerous. She rubbed her face along the curve of his neck. She pressed her lips to his pulse and counted the beats of his heart. A landscape of salt glided onto her tongue, stinging the raw places in her heart. Her wet eyelashes fluttered against his skin. He pressed her close.

"I'm sorry." He breathed into her crown. "I know I've hurt you. I don't expect you to forgive me."

She pressed her voice to his neck and he heard her buried in his veins, reverberating through his mind, low and constricted: "I want to be inside your body." Her fingers curled at his mouth, tracing its shape. He closed his eyes. Her knuckles sank through his lips, fingertips skimming onto his tongue. She gripped his chin. She licked the edge of his earlobe and whispered: "If you ever leave me again I'm going to kill you and eat you." The words struck at his strong points, taking his posture down one peg at a time until his jaw went soft on a gust of heated breath; Mira nuzzled the tracks of his tears, licking them up as they freshened, her hand moving in a slow circle on the irregular rise and fall of his chest. She brushed her briny mouth against the furrowed trembling skin between his eyebrows and nuzzled the bridge of his nose. "Do you understand me?" He nodded, running his fingers up the underside of her chin. She kissed his big weathered knuckles, breathing between them, and started to unfasten his shirt. Her breath hitched and broke apart. "I love you," she said, the syllables running aground. Her eyes clenched shut and she struggled to catch a full breath. "I l-love you, Adam, p-please don't…" She started to cry. "If you ever…don't you…don't. Just…don't!"

"What do you need? I'll give you anything you need."

"I need the last two years of my life back!" Her voice rose, wavered, cracked. "You can't give me that!"

"No." He wiped her nose. "I can't."

Mira pushed him away. "I'm sleeping with Will."

"That doesn't surprise me. Do you love him?"

"Yes."

"Did you love Lewis as well?"

Mira slapped him.

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"Fuck you!"

"I see that Will told you I knew."

"I'm not talking about this now."

"Why not?"

"You left me. Not only did you leave me, but you pretended that you died. I cuckolded you, yes, but you widowed me. We're square."

He covered her reddening handprint with his palm. "Fair enough."

Mira took down a glass and went to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice.

"Would you like me to leave?"

"No." Mira filled the glass. "No, of course not."

"What would you like me to do?"

She sighed. "I honestly don't know. I don't have any answers. I'm still getting over the shock." She sipped. "I think a part of me will doing that for a long time."

Adam moved her hair back over her shoulders. "Is there any way I can help?"

"I need to pick Sarah up in a couple of hours." She finished off the juice. "Your brother will be home before then and I expect he'll be surprised, but not as surprised as you would think, and I doubt he'll show it."

"Where is your piano? I should think playing would calm you down."

Mira put her empty glass in the sink. "I don't have one. We don't have the room."

"How long has it been since you played?"

"I haven't played the piano since I left England." She turned on the faucet and dipped the glass under the stream. "I do other things now. I write music, mostly. I have some drums." She glanced at him. "I teach my daughter how to play them. I teach her how to dance."

He touched the center of her back. "It's not the same, is it, to play the drums."

Mira rinsed out the glass. She flipped it upside down onto a folded towel to dry. She shook her head. "It's not."

"What will you do now?"

"Call Will," she said. "Start a good supper. Make a cake for dessert and start some bread. What else is there? If there's a manual for this sort of thing I haven't read it. What do you do when your dead husband comes back to life? Have a nice dinner? Have a party?" She shrugged and started looking through her cookbooks. "I can't think of anything else, so that's what I'm going to do." She squatted down and opened the lower cabinets. "In my bedroom there are scrapbooks and some DVDs in marked slips. They're all of Sarah. Go look at them if you like. I…I really need to be alone right now." She pulled out a mixing bowl. "Please."

"Very well." Adam paused. "If you want help with the cooking don't hesitate to ask."

"I won't."

He left the kitchen. Mira let out a long breath, her hands braced on the counter, and then she picked up the phone.


End file.
